Let me start with TNA/GFW/Impact Wrestling/The Company Of A 1000 Names. They are averaging 297,700 viewers so far in 2017. They averaged 310,800 viewers in 2016.
The prediction I had made for TNA was that they could do just as well as they did last year or better. It is not likely that they will do better in 2017. Nevertheless, they can still meet the 300,000 benchmark and come close to as well as they did last year. They have to be consistent with what works and build around that. They have not done a great job at that. The fact that they have gone through so many changes just this year is not good. Losing The Hardys was obviously a part of their ratings not being better than they are, but the overall confusion with the company is also a problem. The GFW thing ended up being a decent angle and has led to the company being rebranded. But they need to not make the same mistakes of the past.
Over to the WWE and Smackdown. They are averaging 1.78 in the ratings. They averaged 1.72 last year, which featured part of the year having Smackdown go live on Tuesdays and be its own brand again. Looking at their viewership numbers, they have regularly been doing over 2 million viewers this year, with one episode doing over 3 million. They have not gotten more viewers than Raw so far in 2017.
Who says ratings are down for everything on TV? Smackdown is doing better than they did last year and will likely finish the year with a better average than last year. This shows that it is still possible for the WWE to improve their numbers if they make proper changes. Most of the changes that have led to better numbers are structural. Changing nights, going live, and just making Smackdown a big deal again has led to improvements. The show does rely heavily on hype. It gets a little annoying at times. Rely on quality feuds, segments, and characters. For example, stop tossing all the women in the same picture and actually build stars. They have been relying too much on all these historic segments recently. Moreover, Smackdown seems too smark-friendly a lot of the time. Most viewers are not going to be entertained by this. Smackdown could be doing even better than they are, but they would have to make some changes that will likely not happen.
Over on Raw, they are averaging 2.12 in the ratings. Last year, it was 2.26 for the annual average. They have averaged over 3 million viewers 17 times so far this year, but will likely not reach that benchmark much for the rest of the year because of football season.
Raw is already below last year's average for the year. Their worst part of the year is coming up soon. There is no way they will avoid doing worst than last year. The annual ratings average has been declining since 2013. Ratings were about even from 2012 (3.0) to 2013 (3.01). 2012 happened to be an election year. Wasn't 2016 an election year? The idea was that ratings were so bad last year because of all the election coverage. You would expect some kind of improvement this year. At the very least, things should at least remain about even. And if the trend of Raw losing about 700,000 viewers from the start of the year to the end of the year continues, they will be in really bad shape.
I talked about how structural changes have helped Smackdown do better than they did last year. The big structural change for Raw is obviously cutting that third hour. It has been around since 2012. It is no coincidence that ratings have been sinking for most of the years since then. Declining is one thing. Declining at a terrible rate is something else. Three hours is just too much. The brand split being back just makes things harder. The WWE has to sign people just for the sake of filler. They are obviously not stars and not draws. And the WWE is terrible at making stars right now. They can probably be more efficient with just two hours. That efficiency would help the workers get over better with the audience.
Outside of cutting the third hour, Raw just needs to clean up how they run the show. Make better booking decisions. They don't need to pander to a smark audience like Smackdown does, but even a casual audience might not care too much for some of the things going on. A guy like Finn Balor should not be demoted so soon. Kurt Angle is lacking a real personality. There is just a lot lacking. A lot of wasted potential.
If Smackdown can be doing better than they did last year and GFW in a position to do just as well as last year, Raw does not need to be doing as poorly as it is. The excuse about no one watching TV anymore does not hold. I do not believe the WWE's ceiling is collapsing just because of TV viewing habits changing. They have issues that they can fix. If they fix them, things can improve in a lot of departments. They can get more viewers. They can get more people coming to shows. They can get more lively people coming to shows. Workers get more over. And the WWE just makes more money without having to work their workers to the bone, raise prices, and all those other things many people don't want.
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