10 Terrible Decisions That Led To WWE Raw’s Lowest Ever Rating
8. Three (3) Hours
Yes there's a financial rationale beyond greedily hoovering up yet more television hours (more on that later), but the fact that a show once considered the most exhilarating broadcast in the industry has become a legitimately intimidating weekly watch simply cannot go without a mention.
It's very WWE to extend run-times so wildly whilst customer media consumption moves more and more towards instant gratification. Moves and matches are shared over social media via gifs and links whilst WWE produce a three hour live television show and pay-per-views that smash their own Network schedule.
DVR has rendered most live broadcasting moot in 2018 anyway - only sports (and luckily for WWE, Sports Entertainment) appear immune to the issue networks face with viewers moving more towards on demand screening over appointment television, but even the NBA and NFL don't normally ask for three hours plus an overrun from their viewers on a weekly basis. Nothing else does. Modern Hollywood has never been more averse to cutting fluff from films and even the most recent Star Wars epics haven't tiptoed near three hours. Most honest-to-god WWE pay-per-views never even used to.
The company are asking for the earth from their viewership - it's no wonder so many of those eyes have gone wandering to galaxies far far away from the WWE Universe.