WWE Raw: Analyzing the WWE's Flagship Show's Move to 3-Hour Format

Vince McMahon once said that he believes the ideal episode of Monday Night Raw would last only 90 minutes. 

I guess he changed his mind. 

The WWE announced yesterday that Raw will permanently expand to a three-hour show beginning on July 23, marking the first time that a weekly wrestling program will move to a three-hour format since WCW Nitro did it in January 1998. 

The decision to expand the WWE’s flagship has come as a bit of a shock to wrestling fans because three-hour Raws currently happen infrequently, and adding an extra hour of programming each week is a major step for the WWE. 

Some like it, and some don’t. But I’m here today to analyze both sides of the argument: 

The Pros 

4. More Exposure 

Vince McMahon loves getting the WWE product as much exposure as possible, promoting it through commercials, video games, 7-Elevencups or anything and everything else. 

What better way to promote the WWE than by having an extra hour of programming every week to promote yourself? 

For Vince, I’m sure his logic is that the more that people see the WWE on TV, the more likely they will be to actually watch it and to do so on a consistent basis. 

In essence, the formula is this: more TV time = more exposure = more fans = more money. 

3. Makes the Mid-Card and Even the Lower-Card More Relevant 

At least theoretically, Raw’s expansion should make the WWE’s struggling mid-card and lower cards much more relevant than they currently are. 

I wrote an article the other day on one of the mid-card’s biggest problems, and it’s no secret that I think that the mid-card has actually become nearly nonexistent in the WWE. 

But adding an extra hour of programming should mean that the WWE will have to put more of a spotlight on mid-card feuds. 

That means that the tag-team rivalry of Jack Swagger and Dolph Ziggler vs. R-Truth and Kofi Kingston will presumably become more of a factor on WWE TV, as will other mid-card rivalries. 

These days, the WWE’s mid-card is really not even a mid-card: It’s largely a blend of mid-carders and main eventers because the actual mid-carders get little to no exposure. 

With an extra hour, though, the WWE almost has no choice but to make the mid-card mean more than it has recently. 

2. More Time Means More Wrestlers on the Show 

With an extra hour to fill each week, logic says that that will result in a noticeable increase of the number of wrestlers we see on Raw.

Especially recently, some notable names—like Zack Ryder and The Miz—have had an extremely difficult time getting on TV, but the expansion to a three-hour format should result in more wrestlers getting on the show on a consistent basis. 

You would think that the extra hour could lead to an extra four or five matches or segments, which could result in another five to 10 wrestlers getting on TV during that time. 

This is the ideal situation for the WWE because giving more wrestlers more exposure—whether that be through matches or promos—means that the company is more likely to produce new stars. 

A superstar or Diva can’t get over if she isn’t on TV every week, but with a new three-hour show, it seems like there will be a good possibility that infrequently seen wrestlers start being seen much more often. 

1. Longer Matches and More Time to Build Up Rivalries 

Ideally, Raw’s new format will lead to two major changes: longer matches and more time to build up feuds. 

One of the biggest challenges that Raw has in its current two-hour format is putting on lengthy matches consistently because creative has so much stuff to jam into that 120 minutes. 

With an added hour, however, that five-minute Raw match can be expanded to 10 minutes, while that 10-minute match can go to 15 or more. 

I’m a wrestling fan first and foremost, so the possibility of getting multiple lengthy TV matches every week is something that’s very exciting. 

While matches should get more time under the new three-hour show structure, feuds and rivalries should get more time to be built up as well. 

This could help improve the quality of both mid-card and main event feuds because the WWE will have an extra 60 minutes for promos and matches. That should lead to feuds seeming less rushed than they currently do. 

The “I’m Not Sure What This Means” 

There’s one thing that Raw’s move to three hours has me uncertain about: The end of the brand split. 

I think this colossal change is going to make the brand extension more irrelevant than it’s ever been, so whether that’s a con or a pro depends upon your take on the brand split. 

If you think Raw and SmackDown’s rosters should merge and the brand split should end, you’re probably all for the three-hour format. 

But if you think that Raw and SmackDown should remain two separate brands, then you probably don’t like the change too much. 

Either way, though, I think it’s incredibly likely that Raw’s new format almost guarantees the informal end of the brand extension. 

The Cons 

4. Overexposure 

More exposure isn’t always a good thing, and I think that could very well be the case here. 

Adding an extra hour of Raw is going to mean that WWE fans have to sit through 180 minutes (and likely more with the overrun) of WWE content in a single night, which is a lot for anyone to digest every Monday of every week. 

When you combine three hours of Raw with two hours of SmackDown, that’s 300 minutes of WWE programming each week, not including Superstars or NXT. 

There comes a point when the WWE becomes oversaturated and watered down, and I’m afraid that that’s what will happen with the overexposure that result from an extra hour of Raw every week. 

Too much exposure is not a good thing, and it could come back to bite the WWE in the butt. 

3. Added Pressure on the Creative Team 

It’s hard enough for the creative team to come up with two hours of quality programming for Raw every week. 

So, what do we think is going to happen when they have to produce three hours of content for the WWE’s flagship show week after week, month after month? 

That is a lot of added pressure on creative, which is going to have find a way to produce three entertaining hours when it currently struggles to produce just two. 

And think about how stressful it’s going to be for the creative team during pay-per-view weeks. 

With a three-hour PPV, a three-hour Raw and a two-hour SmackDown in a three-day span, creative is going to be forced to come up with eight hours of programming in a very short span. 

That is going to put a ton of weight on the creative team’s back, and chances are that those guys are going to fold under the pressure. 

2. More Filler  

Let’s just be honest with ourselves here—the recent three-hour Raws have been pretty horrible. 

Instead of giving us longer matches and better buildup for feuds and PPVs, the extra hour typically results in a boatload of unnecessary filler. 

It’s almost as if the WWE’s philosophy with three-hour Raws is to cram as much crap into the show as possible, so instead of a more spaced-out show, it’s a more jam-packed one that somehow feels even more rushed than the typical two-hour one. 

We generally have to sit through an extra hour of pointless backstage segments, two or three-minute matches and an insane amount of replays. 

The extra hour isn’t the problem as much as how the WWE actually uses that hour is. 

While I would love to see it be used how it should be, it is often used in the exact opposite manner. It’s a lot of fluff and a lot of nonsense that do not add any concrete value to the WWE product. 

I’m afraid that the WWE’s problems with producing three-hour Raws on occasion will be magnified big-time when they have to do it every week. 

1. The Audience’s Poor Attention Span 

There are times when I watch a two-hour edition of Raw, think that the show’s almost over, look at the clock and realize that we still have over an hour left of the show. 

Like with most other wrestling fans, I’m impatient, and I can get extremely bored extremely quickly. 

Why? Because I have a really short attention span. And chances are you do, too. 

It’s incredibly difficult to sit through an entire two-hour Raw without wanting to pause it, start DVRing it and watch the rest at a later date. 

Add another hour to the show, and that problem gets even worse. 

The bottom line is that not many fans have the ability or the attention span to sit through two hours of pro wrestling every Monday night every week of every month. 

You think they’re going to be able to do that for three hours every week? 

I sure don’t. 

My Take 

I’ve offered my thoughts on both sides of the equation, but truth be told, I think the cons vastly outweigh the pros. 

At least on paper, the expansion to three hours seems like a good idea because it could result in a lot of positives, such as longer matches and better buildup for feuds. 

But the history (especially the recent history) of three-hour Raws shows that these lengthy episodes come with a lot more negatives instead of positives. 

Rather than focus more on actual wrestling and feuds, they tend to give us a lot of BS that adds virtually nothing to the WWE product. 

When you combine that with all of the stress put on the creative team and the average wrestling fan’s poor attention span, the recipe for disaster is there. 

It’s asking a ton of creative to produce an extra hour of programming every week, much less than one that is actually entertaining and improves the overall quality of the WWE product. 

The expansion to a three-hour format didn’t work for WCW Nitro, and it’s not going to work for Monday Night Raw.

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.