10 Reasons Why WWE's Stagnation Will Never End
Even in wrestling, comfort is the death of ambition.
It's easy to be critical of WWE's current state, but the company aren't in a bad spot at the moment. Their market share is untouchable, revenue is through the roof, and there's plenty to enjoy across their many brands if you're willing to cherry-pick. Things could be a lot worse, basically.
The problem is that each of their good points is tempered by a disappointing low. Revenue might be high, but profit margins and Network subscription counts aren't hitting targets, and ratings are as dismal as ever. They're not even close to going out of business, but the company aren't moving forward either, and that's a problem.
WWE have flatlined. They operate solely within their comfort zone, which mitigates risk, but offers only limited opportunities for growth. Even when the company give the impression that they're progressing, they rarely take anything more than a couple of steps forward at a time, and it has been this way for years.
Stagnation is a disease for WWE, and curing it would mean tackling a multitude of deep-rooted problems at once. Sadly, this is an impossibility for a company so content on coasting from one quarterly report to another...
10. The Weekly Variety Show
Raw and SmackDown are professional wrestling's biggest variety shows. Rather than catering to only one or two sects of their audience, the promotion try to appeal to as many different fan groups as possible, which is understandable. They're not a niche entertainment company, but an unstoppable titan who have sat atop their industry for close to two decades now, so of course they want to satisfy a wide range of consumer needs.
Unfortunately, this strategy is one of the main reasons why WWE's weekly programming is so inconsistent. Celebrity appearances like the Ball family on MizTV exist to pop the mainstream audience. Raw and SD usually feature at least one good-to-great match to keep workrate-focused fans happy. Their attempts at comedy are often laughably bad, but are clearly aimed at appealing to those who share Vince McMahon's sense of humour.
Those who value in-ring action above all else won't always pop for Enzo Amore segments, and vice versa, meaning that no single audience segment will ever feel completely satisfied by an episode of Raw or SmackDown.
It'd be wiser for WWE to ape the original brand split's approach, where Raw was sports entertainment central, and SmackDown was a wrestling-centric island away from the madness. Sadly, the company are instead focused on spreading too many different themes and tones across both shows, creating a product that's never universally satisfying.