WWE: 7 Reasons Raw Should Not Be 3 Hours Long

The 1,000th episode of Monday Night Raw marked the start of a new era.

For the foreseeable future, the WWE's flagship show will now be three hours. That's 180 minutes of WWE action (and more with the overrun) each and every week on Monday night.

Just like with anything else, there are opponents and proponents of this move.

As for me, I stand firmly against the WWE's decision to expand Raw and make it the longest (in terms of minutes per week) weekly show on TV.

So, please allow me to explain why.

Here are seven reasons why Monday Night Raw should not be three hours long.

7. The West Coast Problem

Raw's move to a three-hour format is particularly bad for WWE fans on the West Coast.

Now, when Raw emanates from anywhere in the Pacific time zone, the show will start at 5 p.m. there.

And what are most people doing at 5 p.m. on a Monday? Working or leaving work.

Anytime Raw heads to a city like San Diego or Seattle from this point forward, the show will be gong on the air right at the same time many wrestling fans are stuck in rush hour traffic, which could affect both live show attendance and viewership for Raw's first hour.

I know the fact that Raw is starting an hour earlier may not seem like a substantial difference, but it will be on the West Coast, especially for the WWE crew.

Having to have the arena prepared and the show written by 5 p.m. rather than, let's say, 7 p.m. like it would be in the Central time zone is a minor detail that could have major consequences.

A stressed out road crew and creative team, combined with fans puts into a bad situation, spells disaster for Raw's future on the West Coast.

6. The WWE's Past Struggles with Three-Hour Shows

Past three-hour episodes of Raw haven't exactly been great for the WWE in terms of both quality and ratings.

While Raw's last three-hour show actually did very well, history tells us that that usually isn't the case and that three-hour Raws usually suffer in a wide array of areas.

The first hour of Raw tends to bring the show's overall rating down, which obviously isn't something that the WWE wants to see.

But it's the quality, or lack thereof, of three-hour Raws that really has me worried.

I mean, how many three-hour Raws have actually been good?

Of course, there have been quality three-hour Raws here and there, but the general consensus seems to be that two-hour Raws have been much better than ones that last for more than 180 minutes.

This is due to a number of factors, many of which we'll discuss later on this slideshow.

5. Even More Direct Competition with Some of Monday's Biggest Shows

Moving the start time of Raw up one hour puts the WWE's flagship show in direct competition with even more of some of TV's most-watched shows.

This fall, Raw will now be directly competing with the kickoff for Monday Night Football in its first hour, and at other times throughout the year, it will have to deal with widely-watched shows like The Bachelor and Dancing with the Stars.

Monday is generally one of the biggest nights of the week for TV viewership, and that has always been true, even when Raw was just two hours.

But all that the WWE is really doing by adding an hour to Raw each week is putting itself up against more shows with some of the biggest audiences on TV.

Shows like The Voice and How I Met Your Mother, both of which will air at the same time that Raw starts during the fall, could take away sizable portions of the Raw audience.

DVR could save the WWE from losing too much of its audience, but we won't really know until a few months from now just how much moving Raw up one hour will hurt its performance in the ratings department.

4. The Added Strain It Puts on the Creative Team

We would be dumb to overlook the stress that an extra hour of Raw is going to put on the creative team.

Creative already has to book four hours of TV for Raw and SmackDown each week, which isn't easy. But it's only going to get harder with an additional hour of Raw programming each week.

Those guys are now going to have to find a way to fill up 180 minutes (minus commercials) of entertaining programming 52 weeks a year, and that's in addition to what we get on SmackDown.

The potential for some serious burnout among creative writers is certainly there, which could seriously affect the quality of the programming we see on TV each week. And not in a good way.

But the creative burnout problem will only get worse during weeks when the WWE also holds a pay-per-view.

Whenever a PPV airs on a Sunday night, the WWE writing staff is going to have to book that three-hour PPV, a three-hour Raw and a two-hour SmackDown all in a span that lasts just more than 48 hours.

That sounds absolutely awful.

Chances are this is going to cause a lot of chaos backstage and a lot of stress for everyone involved, from creative to Vince McMahon to the wrestlers themselves.

3. More Time Means More Filler

Raw's additional hour could lead to a number of positive changes, like more time devoted to the Divas division, a bigger emphasis on the tag team division and the mid-card or longer matches on each show.

I stress that could part, though, because the chances of that happening are pretty slim.

Generally speaking, three-hour Raws don't utilize those additional 60 minutes like they should. Instead, we get an additional 60 minutes of filler.

The creative team typically tries to cram more wrestlers into the show than is feasibly possible, and as a result, we are forced to sit through a glorified, extended version of a two-hour Raw with more pointless backstage segments, stupid skits and more TV time for the guys who don't really need it.

I know this sounds pessimistic of me, but I refuse to believe that the WWE will use its additional hour properly until I see it happen on a consistent basis.

A big part of me knows that more time means more crap that adds virtually nothing to the WWE product.

We will likely get about 50 replays of segments that already happened on the show, 20 minutes of Twitter hype and another 20 minutes of Tout promotion.

I'd love to be wrong about this, though.

2. The Audience's Poor Attention Span

How many times have you watched an episode of Raw and felt like the show was dragging on for hours upon hours?

Come on, you know you've been guilty of this in the past. I sure have.

I often find myself failing to be able to sit through a two-hour Raw, quite simply because my attention span isn't that great and the WWE isn't giving me a reason to change my ways.

Chances are that a big chunk of WWE fans will get fed up with all of the nonsense that we put up with during a standard Raw at some point and either change the channel or just sort of zone out.

That's true right now with a two-hour Raw, so what do you think is gonna happen now that Raw is three hours?

That problem is only going to get worse, that's what.

The standard weekly TV show is usually 30 minutes or an hour long, but Raw will now be at least six times longer than a show like Two and a Half Men and three times longer than a majority of the most-watched shows on TV.

The WWE is asking a lot of the fans to expect us to set aside three hours every Monday to watch a show, much less be genuinely entertained by it throughout its entirety.

For that reason, this three-hour Raw experiment is an epic failure just waiting to happen.

1. WWE Overload

I love the WWE.

I consider myself to be an extremely loyal fan. After all, I haven't missed an episode of Raw since 2006, and generally speaking, I now watch every Raw, SmackDown and PPV every year.

But just because I generally enjoy the hell out of the WWE, that doesn't mean that I can't fall victim to what I call "WWE overload."

There have been many times when, quite frankly, I find it to be more of a burden than a joy to watch anywhere from four to eight hours of WWE programming in a week's span.

Especially when the product is really bad, it's often extremely difficult for me to be motivated to watch Raw and SmackDown, plus a pay-per-view.

I still do it, but there are many fans out there who won't, especially if the quality of the product falls off like it tends to do at times.

If the WWE isn't delivering quality programming on a consistent basis, can the company really expect us to tune in for five hours each week, much less eight?

I'm not sure that's very realistic.

There is a point when the WWE overexposes itself and shows all of its flaws by having too much programming, and as much as I hate to say it, the company will be teetering on that point as long as Raw is three hours long. 

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.