David Lightfoot
TCOM 306
November 13, 2003
Short Paper/Presentation
World Wrestling Entertainment
Bodyslams,
drop kicks, choke holds, characters like Stone Cold Steve Austin, and
controversial storylines have made World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE for
short, some of the most popular programming today. Also known as the “male soap opera,” the WWE
has offered this type of programming since it’s inception in the early
1980s. Most recently, the WWE has become
a corporation that not only entertains viewers, but has become profitable on
the Stock Exchange. This is a report
that even Vince McMahon would be proud to hear!
This paper will discuss the brief history of the WWE, ratings of the two
of the WWE’s most popular shows: Raw and
Smackdown, as well as explaining recent news at the WWE.
In order for
the average person to understand what is and will be going on in the WWE, it is
necessary to briefly discuss the history of the WWE. The organization was purchased by Vince
McMahon in the early 1980’s from his father who was in control of the Worldwide
Wrestling Federation or the WWWF. During
that time, wrestling was mostly a regional sport, not as national or
international as it is today. A few
years later Vince and his wife Linda McMahon help create what would become a
phenomenon in wrestling, WrestleMania.
This program, shown on closed circuit television to numerous theaters,
showed the best that Vince McMahon’s organization could offer, as well as many
celebrities like Cindy Lauper, Muhammad Ali, and Liberace just to name a
few. The next year, WrestleMania 2,
would be shown on the new Pay-per-view where it has run successful up to
now. WrestleMania will be celebrating
its twentieth anniversary this coming March.
In the 1990’s the WWE met up with some fierce competition in Ted
Turner’s World Championship Wrestling, or WCW, on their flagship program “WCW
Monday Nitro.” At the time, “Raw,” the
WWF’s flagship program had done pretty well in the ratings with its exciting
fights and familiar characters like “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan,
but when WCW Monday Nitro came around, “Raw” had to change. During the infamous “Monday Night Wars”
between Raw and Monday Nitro, Vince McMahon, then an announcer and owner of the
WWF, and Eric Bischoff, a WCW announcer and president of WCW, went back and
forth trying to up one another with tactics like letting the WCW announcers for
Nitro give out results for Raw, and other taunts. At one pay-per-view, Eric Bischoff had
invited Vince McMahon to fight him in a non-biased fight. Vince didn’t show up and Eric automatically
won by count out. Eventually the fun
and games came to an end on March 23, 2001, when Vince McMahon and the WWF
purchased WCW from Ted Turner. That Monday,
March 26, 2001 went down as one of the most historic nights in professional wrestling,
as Vince made a simulcast during both shows explaining everything that had
happened and his plans for WCW. His major plan was to fire every employee there
since they had treated him and the WWF so shabbily. Eventually Vince had a change of heart, and
allowed some wrestlers from the WCW to get involved with WWF programming. That next year, the WWF was involved in a
court case with another WWF: the World
Wildlife Fund. The organization believed
that Vince’s WWF was promoting violence and other ideas that the World Wildlife
Fund did not appreciate. Eventually the
World Wildlife Fund would win, and Vince’s World Wrestling Federation would
become the World Wrestling Entertainment.
All of the new WWE’s advertising and products had to be changed to fit
the new name, and anything with the third generation logo, the scratch logo
before the current one, had to be either taken off or in some cases for video,
blurred! Even though the WWE had been
through different changes, the audience loyalty to Vince and the WWE had not.
The main two
shows in the WWE are Raw which can be seen on Spike TV Monday nights from 9:00 pm –
11:00 pm. Most of the time Raw doesn’t even end at the
11:00 hour due to the Main Event of each program, which makes the next show
start five or even ten minutes late. The other popular WWE program Smackdown can be
seen Thursday nights from 8:00 pm – 10:00 pm on UPN. This program is taped on Tuesdays and edited
for Thursday’s show, so the show preceding Smackdown which is usually the news
can start on time. According to Steve’s
World of Wrestling at http://www.steveswrestling.com, ratings for Raw and
Smackdown have proven that there is a loyalty to the WWE. Raw’s ratings for this past year have had an
average rating of 3.7 between October 28, 2002 and October
27, 2003. Their biggest rating for the year was on March
3, 2003 of a
4.5 which was when Stone Cold Steve Austin made his return to the WWE after a
year of problems with contracts and other grievances. Smackdown on the other hand, had an average
rating last year of 3.3 between October 24, 2002 and October
23, 2003. Their biggest rating was tied between the
episodes on October 24, 2002 and June 12,
2003 with a
3.7.
According to
Business Week on July
28, 2003,
WWE has decided to start posting its weekly performance metrics on their
website – WWE.com because Wall Street had stopped paying attention to WWE. “We’re going to act like we’re our own
analysts,” said Chief Financial Officer Phil Livingston. WWE blames TV reality shows for their lower
ratings since signing on with Wall Street.
Their TV ratings have dropped 15% to 20% since 2002. Their pay-per-views have dropped 18% and the
audience for live matches has also dropped 25% to around 6,600 people per
event. From that dark cloud comes a
silver lining for Smackdown. In MediaWeek’s April 7,
2003 issue,
Smackdown made an arrangement with UPN where the network will sell all the
commercial time on the show and will attract some nontraditional advertisers to
the show. Currently, Smackdown is a
popular outlet for movie studios, video games, and the U.S. Military
commercials. In their current deal, UPN
paid WWE a $588,000 weekly licensing fee and retain the entire inventory of
advertising time during the show. The
WWE hopes that UPN will bring new advertisers to the show by packaging buys
with other programming on the network, something the WWE could not do under the
old deal. “It seemed to make sense to
let UPN take its highest-rated show and sell it with its other shows,” said
Gary Davis, a WWE representative. Smackdown remains UPN’s top show among young
men, even though the ratings have dropped 38 percent among men 12-34 and 48
percent among male teens from their peak during the 1999-2000 season. Smackdown averages around $18,000 per thirty
second commercial, although some people say that UPN could bump that price up
to $25,000 without resistance. Also in
recent news, WWE purchased back two million shares that Viacom owned after the media
giant determined that its interest in the company was no longer strategic. Although the sale was made, this has nothing
to do with the alliance that WWE has with Viacom. It will still continue to show Raw on Spike
TV and Smackdown on UPN. Finally in recent news, WWE has devised a
Smackdown promotion with Subway sandwich shops and Fleer cards. Fleer has created a series of cards that will
be offered as an incentive for purchasing WWE’s monthly pay-per-view offerings. This program started with August’s SummerSlam
pay-per-view. Subscribers to the
pay-per-views will receive a five-pack of cards that feature WWE superstars
like Andre the Giant and other classics.
One in thirty packs will contain a card that has a piece of a WWE shirt,
chair, or mat. Subway was the first
partner to sponsor a segment of WWE-programming called WrestleMania
Recall. WrestleMania Recall spotlights moments
of past WrestleManias.
In all of
WWE’s history, there has never been a dull moment. This is proven in and outside of the ring,
with business and entertainment to even getting the companies name
changed. Though everyone now considers
professional wrestling a joke, there are still people who enjoy these types of
programming that brings us back to the Roman days of blood and gore. This is programming that you cannot get bored
with because as Jim Ross, the Raw announcer says every week, “Business is about
to pick up!”