WWE Cutting Down On YouTube Clips To Help Ratings
Company hoping to stop viewers skipping show.
Those searching for YouTube videos of this week's Raw will have found themselves severely disappointed (or, perhaps, gratefully relieved) on Tuesday morning, as they discovered an almost barren wasteland on WWE's official channel.
This isn't down to laziness or carelessness on the part of the company's web team, but a calculated decision designed to help fight dwindling ratings.
According to Dave Meltzer, speaking on Wrestling Observer Radio, WWE believe the surfeit of highlight videos made available so soon after Raw and SmackDown airs are dissuading viewers to tune in live, in the knowledge they can watch a condensed synopsis on demand.
Until now, WWE has uploaded clips of Raw happenings as soon as they have aired on TV. This Monday, they withheld on providing YouTube content until the episode reached its third hour.
Obviously, it'll take more than one week if this move is to positively affect ratings, given most expecting to catch up on YouTube will have already missed the show as normal. It certainly doesn't seem to have made much difference immediately; this Monday's Raw recorded 2.24 million viewers, which, while up on last week's figure, is still the second lowest rating outside holidays in the show's history.