WWF New Generation Vs WWE In 2020: Which Was Worse?
8. Ratings
This isn't exactly an objective measure, but with the absence of buyrates and ticket sales in 2020, it's one of the few where we can compare some random numerical data.
April 30th 1995 seemed as good a date as any to pluck from the company's Raw stats that year. Nitro hadn't yet debuted to chip away at the figure, but WrestleMania and any associated buzz had passed. In this relative sweet spot, the flagship secured the attention of 2,280,000 homes. Flash forward to the April 27th 2020 edition, and Raw only managed 1,817,000 viewers. And the figures got worse as the year progressed, bottoming out in December with the show's lowest rating ever (1,527,000).
Yes, television - and the consumption of it - has changed almost beyond recognition in the last 25 years. Butso too has the number of people that watch WWE programming, hasn't it? It's a monolithic monster of an organisation now compared to the struggling former titan of industry it was in 1995. Regardless of if people are choosing to watch the show's best bits on YouTube or in neatly-packaged Twitter videos, they aren't making an appointment with the screen on Monday Nights where it matters most. A drop-off of over a half a million per year in the last half-decade is endemic of problems with the product as much as its supply line.
Which Was Worse?: 2020