The WWE ROI Limits
I have a read a lot of people complain about the air time some wrestlers get. They complain that once a wrestler like John Cena makes it to the top and makes money for the WWE, they stay there even if it clogs up the product. The WWE wants to make sure they make as much money as they can.
The WWE has a more precious commodity then money, air time. The WWE has about 670 minutes of cable airtime to disturb between their stories every month. It sounds like a lot, but if you watch a Raw, it is amazing how quickly that time passes. (I agree with Tom Holzerman that the WWE wastes too much time repeating itself and recapping.)
This precious commodity really limits what the WWE is willing to do with their product. They have two shows, that are slight different from each other. At best Raw and Smackdown are different shades of the same color. At worst they are two different shows that are hard to tell the different between.
After WCW was bought by WWE there was a chance for one company to run two promotions. This was seen as a magical moment. The WWE could own all of pro wrestling by running the two top promotions. This never really came to past for a number of reasons. The second thing the WWE tried to do was try to extend the brands of Raw and Smackdown and run them like two separate promotions.
It looks like the brand extension era is coming to an end. I do not know how much the WWE tried to run the shows like two different promotions, but they always had a very similar feel to me. I never get the feeling I was watching two different companies. If more felt like two different dishes as the same restaurant.
Since some wrestlers make so much money for the WWE, they have a hard time trying to push other wrestlers. It is hard for any company to put aside a source or revenue to develop another source of revenue. It just does not happen very often.
As a public company the WWE can be captured by quarter to quarter thinking. They have one big revenue generator, wrestling and it is hard for them generate more revenue sources in the wrestling world without competing with the current product. I think that is why the WWE has this feeling that they just clone the same wrestler over and over again.
The WWE has a more precious commodity then money, air time. The WWE has about 670 minutes of cable airtime to disturb between their stories every month. It sounds like a lot, but if you watch a Raw, it is amazing how quickly that time passes. (I agree with Tom Holzerman that the WWE wastes too much time repeating itself and recapping.)
This precious commodity really limits what the WWE is willing to do with their product. They have two shows, that are slight different from each other. At best Raw and Smackdown are different shades of the same color. At worst they are two different shows that are hard to tell the different between.
After WCW was bought by WWE there was a chance for one company to run two promotions. This was seen as a magical moment. The WWE could own all of pro wrestling by running the two top promotions. This never really came to past for a number of reasons. The second thing the WWE tried to do was try to extend the brands of Raw and Smackdown and run them like two separate promotions.
It looks like the brand extension era is coming to an end. I do not know how much the WWE tried to run the shows like two different promotions, but they always had a very similar feel to me. I never get the feeling I was watching two different companies. If more felt like two different dishes as the same restaurant.
Since some wrestlers make so much money for the WWE, they have a hard time trying to push other wrestlers. It is hard for any company to put aside a source or revenue to develop another source of revenue. It just does not happen very often.
As a public company the WWE can be captured by quarter to quarter thinking. They have one big revenue generator, wrestling and it is hard for them generate more revenue sources in the wrestling world without competing with the current product. I think that is why the WWE has this feeling that they just clone the same wrestler over and over again.
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