Let me start with TNA. They did not even last a full year on Destination America. But they are not dead. They will be moving to Pop, another network I had never heard of that it turns out I do have. TNA didn't get anywhere near a million viewers for any episode of Impact last year. Will a switch to Tuesdays help them? I do not expect them to do too much worse on their new network. They just have to promote themselves properly and bring in some more star power. They are not very good at creating stars, so they definitely need to bring people in to help draw for them and give a rub to people they do try to build to be stars.
Moving on to the WWE, Smackdown is also changing networks. It is moving to USA. It will remain on Thursdays, which means it will still be taped. That will always hurt numbers. And numbers were terrible in 2015. Smackdown averaged 1.7. That is down from 1.89 from the previous year. You can just look at how the WWE has handled Smackdown in 2015 and see the problem. Rarely do important things happen on Smackdown. Moreover, the main event for Smackdown often just features a rotation of midcarders. If the WWE was actually building these guys to be stars or it was helping them to get more over and become draws, there would be no problem with handling the show like this. The way the WWE handles Smackdown does not really seem to be helping anyone. And it shows in the ratings. The show even dropped below 2 million viewers twice in 2015. Even if you want to put the blame on holidays and football, which will still be an issue in 2016, the WWE cannot like seeing their second most important show dropping like this.
How has the WWE's #1 show done in 2015? It averaged a 2.64 for the year. It averaged 2.95 the year prior. That is a pretty terrible drop. Football season obviously ravaged the WWE, but part of the problem was that there was no real spike during the weeks leading up to Wrestlemania. They may have gotten over 5 million viewers for the Raw after Wrestlemania, but that would not be enough to balance out the rest of the year. And there was no real big summer angle after all that to draw a big number. The Undertaker coming back for a few matches after his usual Wrestlemania appearance was nice, but it didn't do too much.
How do I think Raw will do in 2016? Last year around this time of year, the WWE was playing with pretty much their full deck, having their regular stars available and their part-timers. That still led to mediocre numbers for Wrestlemania season. I do not think the roster has improved that much, even if Vince McMahon is more active now. The angle he is involved in does have potential to draw, but you have to worry if some fans won't bother tuning in because they have seen this story before. Many people have compared this current angle between Vince and Roman Reigns to Austin vs. Vince. How the WWE does in January could tell the story of how they do for the rest of the year. A mediocre start last year in January led to a terrible finish. I doubt the WWE can get back to over 3.0 so fast, even with football season over. Nevertheless, this will be an important month to keep your eye on from a ratings standpoint and I will probably talk about January ratings again.
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