Picture taken from wwe.com
Last week, Vince McMahon came down to RAW to address things regarding WWE. Before that, I believe there are lot of fans that is satisfied with the previous night Pay-Per-View (PPV), TLC. For the first time since I don't know when (I don't keep track), SmackDown main evented a PPV. Not just that, the main event was for the SmackDown Women Championship. And the match was damn good. Something is going on...
Next day, Vince and family went down to the ring and address the future and direction of the products they provide. They dubbed it a "New Era". I'm not sure but I thought they've dubbed that a few years ago? But again, I'm hopeful but I'm still a little bit skeptical with this promise. 1st thing is of course taking the title away from Brock Lesnar and never let him come close again. They also said there will be more fresh matches and new faces. The next day on SmackDown Live, Mustafa Ali was announced as a permanent roster of SmackDown Live. I'm so happy for him.
Seth Rollins on RAW has openly address the rating of RAW the past weeks, and last week, Stephanie once again address that the products was bad and promise to fix that.
At first, WWE kinda don't want to acknowledge the rating drop, but after record lowest rating to another in such a short period of time, they finally acknowledge them. Is rating important? In this day and age, people way of watching TV has evolved as now they don't usually watch live, they watch it 'On-Demand' such as at Hulu. The medium of consumption has changed. People also watched the highlights on Youtube and it hurts the rating. People just don't want to invest their time on a long boring dragged show.
At the end of the day, rating still has their importance, at least for the platform provider. USA Network surely want a product that can get a good rating so they can put advertisement in it. WWE also need the platform so they can persuade people to subscribe to their WWE Network.
Next, about the brand split. Since Shane McMahon was also in the ring on RAW, the overall operation will be centralized, I guess. But I still hope the brand split is still the thing. Logically, I thing the brands (RAW and SmackDown) need to be separated. We know that next year, SmackDown will move to Fox and Fox reportedly want SmackDown to be treated as a flagship show and have a different approach than RAW. It's good to have separate show with different set of roster and different approach, when a wrestler drafted to another show, it will be a completely different environment for them and for us to see.
For now, we can only wait and see what is WWE next move.
Happy new year in advance everybody! Let's hope for a great wrestling year next one.
