10 Reasons Why WWE's Stagnation Will Never End

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.