The best decision the WWE made here was to make Smackdown live. Regardless of anything else, that should help the show's ratings. A lot of fans just read spoilers and skip the show. Fans can just read a recap of the show and still skip it, but it seems more likely that more fans will now tune in to watch it live. Besides that, there will be no regular NFL action for the WWE to compete against on Tuesday.
How about the brand split? That is where I think there might be a problem. If this were a short-term brand split just for the sake of pushing a feud between Shane and Stephanie McMahon, then it would be fine. A long-term split is another issue. The WWE couldn't handle the brand split that ended just a few years ago. Their star power on the roster has not really improved since then.
Raw stands to suffer more from this than Smackdown. Important things are going to start happening on Smackdown. Raw, the show where big things are usually expected to happen, will be losing its full deck of talent. How can they fill three hours with the guys they will have left? Some fans are speculating that Raw goes back to two hours. That might be a good decision to further put Raw and Smackdown on equal ground. If they do not do it, Raw's ratings might suffer even more than they already are.
Let me bring up something else I do not like. I do not like how this whole thing just came about. The WWE just said it is going to happen. It is on their website. Why not have an angle? Announce it in a segment. They had a segment a few weeks ago where Vince McMahon named both Shane and Stephanie in charge. He could have made them both in charge of their own brand. They could then later announce on one of the shows that there would be a draft. The McMahon running Smackdown can announce making Smackdown live so it could be better competition for Raw. Everything that was announced on WWE.com could have played out in segments on TV. And it should have. Instead of making this feel like a storyline, it just feels like a business decision.
The WWE has had Stephanie McMahon act friendly towards her brother. The idea many fans expected was that Stephanie would eventually betray her brother. That payoff will not matter now. If the two McMahons go their separate ways with their own brand, then whatever angle the WWE had planned here doesn't matter anymore. Why not continue to tease tension between the two? Act like they cannot coexist sharing power. Have Vince McMahon come back and say that the only way to stop the chaos between the two is to have a brand split. That would have been a better way to handle things.
Go back to Wrestlemania. Shane McMahon had to beat The Undertaker to get control of Raw. He lost. The next night on Raw, Vince just gave Shane control. That was a mediocre way of handling things. You just made the storyline irrelevant. I feel like recent developments fall into the same area as what happened back then. The WWE is not doing a good job creating a storyline with this power struggle. After acting like he hated his son, Vince McMahon just hands him power. After acting like there was tension between Shane and Stephanie, which should have led to an obvious brand split, the WWE announces the brand split without the televised drama that might actually have had some entertainment value to it.
Of course, fans don't care too much about this stuff I have brought up. They are busy making mock drafts and talking about what they should do with the titles. I won't do that. From the standpoint of a writer, the WWE didn't handle this in a creative, linear way. Let's see if they make up for it in the coming weeks.
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