Finding the "E" in WWE: Entertainment in Wrestling & The Mainstream Problem

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"Please keep putting the E in Bleacher Report."

      ~ Jeff Awesome

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Entertainment...

Entertainment is a tricky, fickle (expletive deleted) to pull off most of the time. What entertains you might be disregarded by others.

Something that "wows' you might "bore" the person sitting next to you. Things that you find funny might make others feel uncomfortable, grossed out, or God forbid they don't have a sense of humor and they just stare awkwardly at you.

Entertainment is only considered entertainment when the person involved, watching, reading, or listening... is entertained.

My friend loves the Transformers movies... I have a proud record of falling asleep during every one of them. I could watch Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction a thousand times in a row, but my girlfriend can't watch more then ten minutes of them.

My mom is completely entertained by Michael McDonald (Warning: Contains awkward dancing white people, and sweet facial hair). I would rather hit myself in the face with a sledgehammer then have to listen to his "greatest hits" album ever again.

Some people are thoroughly entertained by Kevin Nash, and some people have more respect for themselves.

Entertainment is kind of like a bad John Cena metaphor, people who look at the same thing boo while others cheer.

Let me ask you some quick questions...

What entertains you? What bores the hell out of you? What makes you laugh? What annoys you? What do you want the WWE to be? What should it be? Who are your favorite wrestlers? Which celebrities do you like? What's your favorite color?

These are all simple questions that have convoluted and very different answers depending on who you ask. Could you imagine the pure scope you would have to cover if you tried to appeal to everybody and everything at the same time?

Well my friends, welcome to the WWE Universe. A universe that consists of so many thoughts, opinions, self-proclaimed pundits, rumors, politics, marketing agendas, history, fans consisting of women, men, children, and of course it's biggest, yet unofficial, oversight committee...The online wrestling community.

Is there anyway the WWE could entertain us all? Does it need to entertain us all? Should it even care about entertaining us all? Because let's face it, people tend to be impatient and fickle.

The WWE knows this and instead of trying to cater to the specific needs of its loyal, hardcore, yet fickle minority it chooses to focus more on broad appeal...

Broad appeal to the WWE means a PG format, growing a younger fan base, more open doors for advertising ventures, a senate run, and of course more money, but comes with the harsh task of trying to entertain everyone.

The WWE now, in a two-hour program, spreads itself out in so many directions that it ultimately dilutes its own product and gives it no focus.

The WWE doesn't have the luxury of being the movie, music, video game, or cable industries where there's a little something of everything for everyone. The WWE has one product to sell, one product to promote, and one product only...Wrestling.

The hard truth is If someone doesn't like wrestling then there's probably nothing the WWE can do to convince them otherwise. It sure does try though, and with its attempts comes the WWE's biggest flaw.

Wrestling use to be cool, it used to have an obscene popularity level that had lasting effects on multiple decades of pop culture....

What the hell happened?

The Minor Appeal of Broad Appeal

Ratings, and the WWE's complete fascination with them happened....

God, I wish the WWE wouldn't solely focus on ratings as it's benchmark for how well they think their product is doing.

How many people, who never watched wrestling, do you think actually stick around and become fans after casually catching a segment of Raw on television?

How many people have deemed wrestling "dumb and fake" due to the rise of UFC? How many people were turned off by the excessive violence, degradation of women, and language used in the "Attitude" Era?

You know, that same Era that was probably the peak of wrestling's popularity. That same Era could actually be the Era that put the WWE in the situation it is today.

A situation, where after so much excessive and over the top violence, that reached a point of no return. The WWE had no choice but to completely slam on the brakes and try to re-invent itself before its fan base became so desensitized to violence, and became a company that children couldn't possibly be a part of. 

Children are the bread and butter of the WWE's fan base, believe it or not. They are the ones, unlike adults, that see the magic the WWE can create.

They are the ones that act as parasites infecting their friends, parents, brothers and sister to the WWE bug; creating life long fans in the process, only for the process to repeat itself when they have their own children.

Side Note: There's a reason why John Cena hasn't turned heel. There's also a reason to promote to families, and offer a PG environment. It keeps the WWE "circle of life" continuously moving.  

There's no denying that ratings for WWE programming have dropped because of its movement away from the more mature themes it once displayed. Fans who come back to the product no longer recognize it and move on, and the fact of the matter is people are just not that interested or even remotely entertained by the current product anymore.

The WWE looks as though its hit a wall in terms of entertaining people within the new format, but perhaps those that are watching are looking for the wrong things. Maybe because casual fans experiencing the product for the first time don't know what to even look for.  

With so much flash and sleight-of-hand movements by the WWE the actual selling point (wrestling) takes a backseat or disappears completely most of the time.

Perhaps the WWE is trying to cater to the wrong people. Should the WWE cater more to its fan base then the general, casual fan in hopes to attract them?

But how many wrestling fans are really out there? If everyone of us tuned in every week to watch Raw, would we alone be enough to jump start the ratings? How many new fans do you think the WWE creates that aren't children of older fans?

Is there even a mainstream market for wrestling like there once was in the 1980's-90's anymore? I tend to believe there is, but the WWE needs to refocus itself and not attempt to woo everyone in. The WWE plays a weird, ineffective, ratings game by trying to make its product accessible to everyone.

The game looks like this:

For every casual person who stopped to see Perez Hilton, there were four wrestling fans who switched the channel, but the same can be said the other way around.

For every wrestling fan that tuned into watch their man Zack Ryder change a tire, there were at least ten casual fans that switched off Raw because it was a pretty dumb scene to those outside the wrestling bubble.

For every casual viewer that tunes in and gets a good laugh at seeing Michael Cole in a dance off, ten wrestling fans have either switched over to Monday Night Football or given up on the product completely.

For every wrestling fan who eagerly tunes into watch CM Punk defend the title against Dolph Ziggler, the casual fan says "Who the hell are these dopes" and flicks over to TBS, who's showing The Rundown and says "This is more like it!".

These same fans are the ones the WWE "buys" when panicked by low ratings, and proceeds to dig deep into their old toy chest of "retired" wrestlers and play with them again instead of playing with their current roster.

While part of WWE's problem in recent history has been its complete lack of faith in its mid card roster, the biggest problem is the marketing line, and direction the company balances carefully on.

In order for the WWE to see it's ratings climb it needs to focus solely on its current roster, as well as, focus on selling them to fans who actually have the ability to make them a star. 

Those fans? The ones who watch the product because they love the product itself. They don't watch for the "entertainment" involved, but for the inherent entertainment in wrestling alone. If the WWE can focus on and manage to bring back it's lost, abandoned, older fan base then two things will have happened...

1. It means the product, as a whole, will be much better. Which means...

2. Improved roster, more stars to promote in the WWE's new plethora of marketing streams (due to the PG format), and of course the WWE out of all this will get...Ratings!!

Celebrities & The Complete Oversell

Did you know that the Funkasaurus and Chris Jericho are trending worldwide on Twitter? 

Of course you did! Because Michael Cole and the WWE told you, and mentioned Twitter, about a thousand times since the last commercial break.

This might be a fun, interactive, occasionally educational, and entertaining way to incorporate the casual fan in all the fun, but to wrestling fans, who see their product become so heavily inundated with this kind of stuff, is annoying.

I can't blame the WWE for finally getting into the social media world as much as it has. It's a smart business move, and opens another medium to promote, advertise, and popularize their product.

However, just like in wrestling itself, where everything is over the top and sometimes excessive, the WWE is constantly ramming itself down the throats of those that are watching.

Instead of allowing the wrestlers to promote the product based solely on their own personalities, abilities, and the inherent entertainment in wrestling; the WWE feels it needs to constantly advertise itself and other sponsors throughout the entire two-hour program...even during matches.

Celebrities, just like social media now, will always be a part of the WWE. Celebrity involvement is great. It's a great way to attract outsiders, but the problem is trying to keep them. Usually once Snooki stops showing up, so do the people that tuned in to watch her. The WWE needs to first focus on bringing back its lost fans with a better product before new ones will even think about sticking around.

There's no denying that the WWE is a marketing powerhouse. It's always been that way. However, the WWE is now trying to market itself (through excessive force) to people who could honestly care less about the product. They care so much about ratings that they've completely lost track of why people actually find wrestling entertaining in the first place...

Wrestling.

Not just good wrestling, but great wrestling. There's nothing more entertaining in the world of wrestling then a match between wrestlers who command the ring, spotlight, and emotions of the people watching. 

The entertainment part of wrestling will always be lumped in with the celebrity appearances, musical acts, fireworks, Twitter, Facebook, and backstage and in-ring promos...

But the one thing the WWE seems to forget is that when people flip over to Raw every Monday night they aren't looking to see Michael Cole plug Perez Hilton's blog a hundred times. They came to see wrestling.

And every time another viewer clicks over to another station the WWE panics and thinks of more "entertainment" to pack into an already overcrowded two-hour program, thus digging the hole deeper and deeper.

It's impossible to entertain everyone. The WWE is wrestling, whether they'd like to acknowledge that or not, and the best thing they can do for ratings is to entertain people with the one thing I know the WWE does better then anyone or anything on the planet...

Wrestling...  

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"Are you not entertained?"

    ~ Russell Crowe in Gladiator

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