RAW to stay at 3 hours.

"WWE CFO George Barrios indicated this week that WWE has no plans to retreat from the current three-hour Raw format.

Despite concerns over the erosion of WWE's flagship show in the long-term, Barrios pointed to several reasons why WWE (and USA Network) are at least publicly pleased with the current three-hour shift during a presentation at the 40th Annual UBS Global Media Conference in New York on Monday.

- In reference to the addition of a third hour (as opposed to the actual third hour of Raw which has experienced audience erosion), Barrios said the 8:00 p.m. hour is "up 35 percent versus what it replaced for USA." Barrios did not say if that is viewership, overall rating, a key demographic, or a combination of numbers.

- Barrios said USA is "very happy with that," referring to the additional hour of programming. "The content is delivering for our network partners," Barrios said.

- The short-term benefit of returning to six hours of original TV programming is generating more revenue from the more-lucrative third hour of Raw (as opposed to one hour of the D-Level Superstars show) and the new "Main Event" show (as opposed to one hour of the C-Level ECW/NXT).

- The only real concern expressed by Barrios is whether WWE is "duplicating" content across all of their shows. However, he claimed the audience is not duplicating, suggesting WWE is reaching a majority of new viewers with each show, as opposed to a majority of repeat viewers.

"When we went from six hours of television to four hours of television domestically couple of years ago, our total viewership declined," Barrios said. "Is there duplication between Raw, Smackdown and now Main Event, Saturday Slam? Of course there is some duplication, but there is non duplicate of the audience.""

- Source: PWTorch.

What do we think? It seems that WWE are more keen on pleasing business partners than fans.

Me only watch tna every week so i dont mind bro

DAMN YOU BARRIOS! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL! Francis


George Barrios FTW.

barry black wrote:Me only watch tna every week so i dont mind bro

All joking a side. At first i wasn't a fan of the 3 hour shows. But slowly week by week i have warmed to the idea and now im at a point where if they got rid of the 3 hour format i would actually be disappointed.

There is a good two hour show within those three hours. At the moment it feels like they have understood they need more content for the tags and undercard, but they dont want to get rid of their recaps, divas and comedy skits so compromised by having three hours. They could get rid of an hour of the crap and have a really good two hour show, far more condensed and action packed and smarter breaks, but I wouldnt trust them to do it right.

I no longer watch the product. The quality has certainly eroded since the introduction of the 3 hour format. I haven't got the time to watch 3 hrs per week it's simply too long.
I liken it to motor racing if you drive your car around the track without changing tyres you'll get further, quicker than those that change but eventually your tyres will wear out.

I keep on finding that I miss the important bits, I'd like it to go to 4 hours a week so they could recap it a bit more for me

3 hours is considered a long time for a film, never mind a television show and considering WWE have been struggling to have consistently good stories for the last 5+ years with a 2 hour Raw, usually there is only one interesting story at a time it seems odd to stay at 3 hours where they have increased the number of adverts and things have burned out a lot quicker than they usually word because of overexposure.

I think the forum should copy WWE's example and recap exciting elements of every thread.

For example "Before the last comment this is what Kay Fabe had to say:

Kay Fabe wrote:I keep on finding that I miss the important bits, I'd like it to go to 4 hours a week so they could recap it a bit more for me

"And we'll have exclusive reaction from VDT as Raw returns!"

That could be either very annoying or absolute genuis...