10 Changes To Fix WWE's Ratings Woes
2. Cut Raw's Third Hour
There is absolute proof that the addition of the third hour of Raw has scared away many, many viewers. Whatever benefits were gained from that extra hour of advertising revenue have been washed away many times over by hundreds of thousands of fan giving up on the product completely.
On 23 July 2012, the change to three hour Raws became permanent. That following month, the show averaged a 3.06 rating. By Aug. of 2016, they averaged a 2.20. On multiple occassions they've dove under 2.0.
You can blame a little bit of that erosion to the increasing popularity of DVRs in the past four years, but that only explains a small part of it. The main issue is there just aren’t that many people who can commit three hours of their lives every single week to any show. WWE should be far more concerned about this than they are, as hundreds of thousands of potential life long fans can't handle the commitment to their flagship product, which is a completely understandable thing.
If the company does get rid of the additional hour to the show, ratings aren’t likely to go up right away, but this is a long term plan at play here. How many more potential customers will WWE scare (or bore) away for good before they finally admit five hours of primetime wrestling a week was a really bad idea?