10 Serious Problems With WWE Right Now
2. Raw Is Still Three Hours Long
With the 1000th episode of Raw in the summer of 2012, the show permanently moved to a three-hour format. Fans scoffed, as WWE's flagship show had enough trouble filling two hours with quality matches and angles. Surely, the three-hour era of Raw would only last a few months.
More than four years later, Raw is still three hours, and fans are suffering. Actually, the overrun means that it's longer than three hours, so each and every week, Monday means 190 minutes of solid WWE action. Even the good episodes - which are few and far between - are very difficult to get through.
What's the solution? There may not be one. One of WWE's main sources of income is the contracts that they sign with networks in exchange for broadcasting rights, and since Raw is one of the USA Network's highest rated shows, they want more of it - and they pay for it. That extra hour of Raw means an extra $50 million a year for WWE, and given that they only made a profit of $25 million last year, without the hour they'd have been deep in the hole.
Nevertheless, the extra hour is a dealbreaker for a lot of fans, and may have contributed to Raw's overall ratings decline.