thread: WWE has never been worse in terms of star development, creative, and the sheer volume of talent having skills & marketability wasted. There’s no reason to think this will change while VKM breathes. That said, speculation about TV industry consequence is wishful thinking.

It would be economic justice if producing bad product meant bad consequences. The WWE business story particularly in this era isn’t one with strong moral, artistic, or even economic consequences.

I don’t mean to encourage acceptance of a bad product (particularly one so influential to every kind of worker in wrestling and to the public perception about what wrestling is). I only mean to say that change won’t come from the direction being willed. Why won’t it?

Even as Raw’s viewership has fallen in half since 2015, it’s not bad enough to concern networks. Even when Raw does a 0.45 in the demo and 1.5mm viewers, it still doubles almost anything else USA can deliver, and it outranks almost every cable show on Monday in the demo.

Smackdown even as it does 0.5 in the demo and 1.8mm viewers, in 1H2020 it out performed its predecessors in the same timeslot with viewers under age 50. Replacing Smackdown would be far more expensive and probably with less valuable viewership. The show isn’t being moved to FS1.

Upcoming competition from the return of major sports will cost Raw and Smackdown viewers. It’s unlikely that competition will provide the viewership catastrophe needed to cause any movement from Fox or NBCU.

When Raw’s hours start consistently falling short of top 5 in the demo on Monday, maybe. When Smackdown stops being #1 or #2 in the demo on Friday, maybe. When AEW is perceived by business partners as the superior wrestling brand, maybe. When NBCU and Fox are unable to use WWE

to drive affiliate fees, yes. Those days aren’t in sight. Maybe that day will come but I think it’s more likely the value of the largest live TV audiences will grow. Even as the largest audiences get smaller, the largest audiences remaining will become more valuable as

networks become increasingly dependent on leading programs and linear TV increasingly becomes the medium that specializes in live, long-form viewing.

The shows are real bad. They leave millions on the table every year to justify the CEO’s insulated creative intuitions.

For now, enough watch. I expect programming to grow more stale and to get gradually worse over the remainder of Vince’s working days. Still, viewership isn’t on a trajectory that suggests WWE TV will lose any of its enormous value.