How WWE Could Creatively Flourish Under Fox Sports
SPORTS Entertainment.
WWE SmackDown debuts on Fox on Friday, 19 October, 2019. It could change everything.
WWE is the flagship brand of the USA Network. In May of this year, IndieWire published a list of the 100 most-watched shows across the United States. On that list, Fox shows appear 21 times. Of those 21 shows, Lucifer, The Last Man On Earth, New Girl, Brooklyn Nine Nine, and L.A. To Vegas were all cancelled by the network for failing to pull in acceptable Nielsen ratings—and advertising revenue—in proportion to production costs. Soberingly, two of those shows outperformed WWE, which snuck late into the list, in joint #93, as USA’s sole representative.
This is key to how SmackDown may operate from 2019 onwards. As the flagship of USA, its best-performing property by some distance, there is zero pressure on WWE to change an ailing formula. With WWE specifically targeting a core fanbase—“Just when we think we have given them every in-ring content possible, they continue to watch”, is WWE Co-President Michelle D. Wilson latest, chilling conference call content forecast—there’s no internal impetus to change, either, unless more of the same, but on different platforms! is considered change.
In 2018, anyway.
Aware of a paradigm shift in home content viewing habits, and the ratings slide across all genres of television, USA, simply, allows its top, bankable star to perform without a scripted promo. WWE needs only adhere to PG guidelines. Were this not the case, surely, USA would by now have ordered some sort of change to arrest a ratings slide that shows little sign of levelling out, much less improving. USA is content with the content content content status quo because the network needs WWE.
Fox does not.
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