By Ian Hunter, PWTorch Trivia Specialist

It’s not bad enough that the matches are overplayed and have become sub-par on more than one occasion. It’s not bad enough that I have to sit through promo after promo after promo that build to nothing. It’s not bad enough that I have to watch every single title in the company be treated like a Russian prop in a Greek tragedy. But now I got Vince McMahon looking at me through the television telling me that he wants to buy my viewership at top dollar. To that I say… whatever Vinnie. You could have bought me (and the vast population of whatever wrestling fans are left in this world) for cheaper. I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but we’re not high class. Mind you, we watch your show. Plus, I’m not watching two hours for a lottery when actual lottery shows last only two minutes.

Now before you start in on the ideal that I’m just here to bash McMahon’s latest attempt to get me back to watching the full two-hours again, hold up. I understand that desperate men do desperate things. But the problem here isn’t with us not wanting to watch. We do, we truly do want to watch the show. We just don’t want to watch the same old junk that’s been force fed to us for almost the past five years. But it’s rather hard when all we see is material that’s been done so many times over it looks like they’re taking the same booking sheets and reusing them every few months. WWE has a number of problems at the moment, but there’s a bigger problem that affects many of the small problems people point out. Surprisingly, it’s not where you think. It’s not in its roster, not in its storylines, not even with management. Give up? The secret is… it’s in the programming.

Let’s do the math. You have Raw for 2+ hours, ECW for an hour, Smackdown for 2 hours, A.M. Raw for an hour, Heat Online (now dead) took up about 30 minutes, the occasional Saturday Night’s Main Event, plus 14 PPV’s totaling 2-3 hours. Not including online content and the 24/7 channel… that’s a lot of programming. The amount of product they put out in a week rivals that of some network’s prime time schedules. You’re probably thinking “So what, Ian? More WWE for me!” No, you don’t get it. You have three wrestling cards of talent spread across more than just the specific shows they’re on. Writers need to come up with new angles for all that programming, management has to book the most original looking match they can for the time, the wrestlers themselves have to make every match just a little different so you’re not bored with it. That creates a strain and pressure that no one ever talks about, but clearly shows through in the work. As pointed out many times this month (and I think proves my point from One Night Stand), how many times can Hunter feud with Orton and make it seem like it’s a fresh feud? The reason the problem persists is because the WWE, more importantly McMahon, won’t admit that the vast television empire they’ve built over the years is the reason they’re having problems. Instead, they’d rather pass blame onto a writing staff who don’t work full work weeks to come up with decent material at the end of that week to make the next week flow perfectly. Or blame the talent for not being able to be on their “top game” with a three-way brand split, and therefore don’t get pushes to give writers people to work with. Heaven forbid they blame the 40+ hours of programming a month that’s driving them to be stale.

So what’s the solution to this problem? Well kids, to quote Michael Scott from “The Office”… “K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Things need to be whittled down to a bare bones version of the company. If you look at the way WWE programming was built over the years, it was all based off competition. Raw was created to fight with the NFL, Raw went to 2 hours to fight with Nitro, Smackdown was created to battle with Thunder, the old Superstars shows were retooled again and again to fight with the NWA, ECW and WCW syndicated shows, PPV’s were made once a month to battle other PPV’s, and all other weekend material was to give them an added edge. Now with nothing to directly compete against, the overall product looks morbidly obese. People don’t have to watch everything, because no matter what show we pick, there’s a recap and a promo of every other show. Did I mention that most every PPV main event they can come up with has been done on television a dozen times? So in order to regain the fans interest WWE needs to start trimming out the fat.

First and foremost, SmackDown… needs to go. I lost interest in the show a year after the brand split and have rarely checked in to see what new developments are happening. Didn’t help things either when it was pushed to Friday nights, moved to the CW Network, and now moving to MyNetwork (which at one point was the Spanish version of FOX). And let me be very candid with this new issue. In my local area the MyNetwork affiliate doesn’t start airing their programming until midnight, and I know they’re not the only one nationwide who does this. At midnight on a Friday I’m out on the town, and I’m not recording the show to watch on the weekend. Anything I need to see on SmackDown I can see on the internet the next day. The show is useless to the majority of viewers and the ratings show this for a fact. On top of that, I don’t care who the U.S. Champion is, or for that matter who the World Champion is, or the Tag Champs there for that matter. The only title that made the show worthwhile was the Cruiserweight belt, and it’s been killed off. If you think about it both storyline and title wise, SmackDown is now where WCW was in early 2001. All that's missing is a celebrity to come in and win the belt. There’s no need for this show anymore, and it needs to go.

And right behind it, ECW on SciFi needs to go as well. I have watched the show three whole times in its existence. The first night, the night it went to HD, and one random night where the main event was RVD vs. Sabu because I knew they’d go off script and start doing dangerous stuff on television (and they did). Other than that, the show has been nothing but a spit in the face to the memories I have of the old ECW, and I refuse to watch. And again based off the ratings, I can see I’m not the only one. On top of that I don’t care if Kane is champion (let alone care about Kane as a character anymore). I didn’t even care when RVD was champion of that brand, and that’s saying a lot. I know Shane McMahon has a soft spot in his heart for the show, but nostalgia only goes so far in the wrestling fans eyes, and there’s a fine line between beating the horse to death and breaking the bones that remain. It needs to leave.

Next up would be syndication. Say what you will about standardized programming, there’s still a place for it in this day and age. Now WWE has run the gambit of shows that have been success and failures over time. Wrestling Challenge, Superstars, Action Zone, All American Wrestling, Mania, LiveWire, Shotgun Saturday Night, Heat, Metal, Jakked, Velocity, Confidential, and more where that came from. The company needs a place to showcase the undercard of the company with occasional title matches, while recapping what happened that week to a larger audience that doesn't have cable. A show like that can still prosper, but it requires a bit of tooling. First, no one who appeared on Raw that week can be back again on the syndicated show later in the week. Second, recaps must be kept to a minimum. Its fine to tell people what happened on Raw, but you can’t keep going back to it before and after breaks. Make one giant recap segment and leave it at that. Third, bring in titles to defend. I wouldn’t expect the WWE title, but how about a Tag Team defense? Or even an I.C. title defense? I wouldn’t go so far as to say they should make a new Television title (AKA, The European Title), but give us a reason to watch the show. One good hour of programming to give younger talent a place to shine, and a reason for us to tune in on Monday.

Which brings us to Raw. Making it the lone show gives WWE a number of opportunities. Eric Bischoff said that the thing that killed Nitro was the fact that there came a point in time that it was no longer destination television. Sound familiar? By killing off all those shows and solidifying the talent under one card with one show, you make Raw destination television. With no double-title standard of World/WWE or IC/US, you have one set of belts to be defended against an entire roster of possibilities. And if the WWE seriously needs more belts, they can bring back the Cruiserweight title, or make the Women’s championship a major focal point in the show again. The change does come at the price that Raw would have to expand to three hours. Depending on what kind of fan you are, that’s either a bonus or a drawback to your viewing. But I believe if done right, it would give the writers as well as the wrestlers a much larger and easier field of play. A merged talent pool with only one major show to write material for with enough time to give the majority of them exposure. Whoever isn’t on Raw is in syndication. Would it be so difficult?

And finally special events. Saturday Night’s Main Event comes along so infrequent (as you can see NBC is afraid to even bring it by once every two months, let alone make it a regular thing), so we don’t need to worry about that. That leaves us with Pay-Per-Views. Again, destination television. If there’s one a month, I’m not really interested in buying more than three a year at best, and that’s on a good year when I’m not bored to tears with the lineup. Go ahead and keep the original four, that’s perfectly fine. At best, I’d say expand to six. Bring back King Of The Ring for late May, then The Great American Bash in July to tide people over until SummerSlam, which should be pushed to the end of September. One every couple of months would be best for everyone. Well, maybe not all those people who make their sole paychecks off PPV events, unless that would give them extra time to put more effort into the look of the event as opposed to reusing the same set pieces year after year. Plus since every PPV is about three hours, that gives WWE a chance to make one last show to hype their PPV on the USA Network. A “Heat-like” show, but only on PPV nights. Give opening matches and hype the event to get last minute buyers who wouldn’t have been interested otherwise.

I know full well none of this is going to happen. They’re going to go with the draft because having two brands means double the wrestling dates and double the cash to be made off live events. It means making people wait years to see dream matches that may never happen. It means holding back younger talent for older warhorses who used to draw big money and refuse to move out of the way. More bad stories, more on championship belts that mean nothing, more programming that looks and feels stale. In other words… more of the same. But it does go to show you that if one smart person in that company took a look at the programming and simplified it down to it’s easiest design, the company would be able to turn out a better product. Sadly, I’m guessing that one smart person is sitting around trying to figure out how to give away a million dollars without actually having to hand over a real check to anyone.

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