Crunching the Numbers: A Look At WWE Programming in General

WWE is by far the largest wrestling company in the world.  They have performed in dozens of countries around the globe, maybe over 100, and remains the most sought-after employer by anyone who wrestles. 

WWE has been a giant in the entertainment industry for decades, beginning as WWF back when Vince Sr. was in charge of the company.  Since Vince Jr. bought his father's company, he has turned it into an entirely different beast.

Since WWE began being the only game in town, they have been adding new programming to their schedule.  I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Let's do the math and then discuss the situation, shall we.

Using the standard assumption that there are four weeks per month, we can estimate how much time each month the WWE is on.

Raw: 2 hours x 4 weeks = 8 hours per month

Smackdown: 2 hours x 4 weeks = 8 hours per month

ECW: 1 hour x 4 weeks = 4 hours per month

Superstars: 1 hour x 4 weeks = 4 hours per month

Monthly PPV: 3.5 hours per month

All this factors out to the WWE being on regular television six hours per week, and on a monthly basis, including PPV, the WWE is on about 27.5 hours.

Using 52 weeks, we can see that on a yearly basis the WWE has about 312 hours of standard programming and with 13 PPV events they have about 45 hours of PPV each year. 

Lets not forget that the WWE does one or two SNME shows at an hour a piece each year and numerous three-hour Raws. 

All this adds up to a lot of TV time for a single company, totalling close to 400 hours per year of programming. Is that a lot?

The WWE constantly receives complaints from the online wrestling community, sometimes it is about too much exposure which ends in people getting bored and leaving, and some complain about not enough exposure leading to people leaving from lack of interest. Where's the middle ground?

When I began watching WWE is was basically Raw, Prime time wrestling and superstars, and 4 PPV events per year, and that was it. WCW had more programming back then but was still the smaller company. 

With the WWE being on a little more than six hours per week it might be hard for someone without a Tivo to catch all of it. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday each have their own shows with some having repeats on different channels.

I for one think the WWE needs to scale back a little. There have been rumors that the WWE is either re-branding or dropping the ECW show, and that makes me sad. I think if anything should go, it's Superstars. The show is only mid card talent wrestling short matches.

ECW is the breeding ground for new talent, which may be why some don't tune in, because they don't know anyone on the show other than Christian and Regal. 

If ECW is re-branded, they may be able to incorporate more top tier talent, but if it stays a one-hour show, I don't see that happening.

There are a few ways to fix this problem. Move ECW off of Syfy and get it on a major network like NBC or USA.

Make it two hours long and drop Superstars all together. And finally add the ECW Tag titles in the mix so the guys have something more to fight for other than the ECW title, which is generally pursued by one guy at a time.

I for one don't feel the WWE has too much programming, they just have the wrong setup.

If they pushed guys who are upper card wrestlers over to ECW, like they did with Big Show and Kurt Angle back when it started, then it could be taken seriously, otherwise ECW will remain the C show.

What do you guys think of all this?