10 Real Reasons Why Wrestling Fans Never Get What They Want
3. Th Return Of A Two-Hour Monday Night Raw
Money. It's as simple as that.
TV rights fees are financial oxygen to both AEW and WWE - big-time wrestling simply does not exist without advertising - and three hours allows WWE to get more of it. It's brutally tedious capitalist mathematics and can be reduced as such. It does not matter that even diehard WWE fans would prefer a more breezy, lean watch on Monday nights. WWE does not care about the boring nothing filler nor even the flattened atmosphere.
If anything - and this is chilling - they'd happily promote a four-hour Raw over a return to two hours if they could get away with it. WWE CEO Nick Khan actually said this out loud. He might know that this would sink row to even more lifeless depths, but he doesn't give a f*ck. His job is to ultimately maximise the returns of shareholders; least among his concerns is a millennial lifer who would rather like to see Johnny Gargano get a push but who isn't going away if that does not happen.
Even when Raw was haemorrhaging viewers, a return to two hours was inconceivable - fewer people watched more adverts for longer than in 2011, and remember what matters to WWE more - and now that the show is hot again, it is impossible.