Mad Dog Posted August 16, 2006 Report Share Posted August 16, 2006 Simple Solutions to Simple (But Glaring) Problems By Todd Martin Over the past five years, World Wrestling Entertainment has gone through serious business travails. A company that was at that point clicking on all cylinders has seen its pay-per-view buys, TV ratings and house show business collapse. This has not been an accident, nor has it been a cyclical decline. Rather, it has been the result of poor booking, creative direction and decision-making. WWE is not yet at a point of no return, but there may come a time when financial rearranging can no longer compensate for consistently declining revenue streams. Thus it is imperative that WWE sooner rather than later address the structural problems in the creative branch of the promotion. Here are some simple keys to an improved product. 1. Rather than a team of writers with a head, there needs to be a head booker with a number of assistants. In the former system, which is what the WWE does presently, there is a large group of people throwing in ideas. The product that comes in is not the product of one primary vision, but rather a blend. One person is responsible for approving the ultimate decisions, but that is not the same. What WWE needs instead is one person who tells everyone else the direction of the promotion, and the assistants are responsible for seeing this direction through, and for coming up with ideas to advance that direction. That way there is one person guiding the ship. 2. There needs to be long-term booking. Week to week booking has been the norm for WWE in recent years, and it makes it harder to accomplish goals. Rather than booking week to week, there needs to be a basic long-term vision. It isn?t coincidental that WrestleMania in recent years has produced some of the best promotion of the year. It?s because that is typically the point with the most long term planning. Batista was one of the last wrestlers to get over in WWE, and it was a result of a long-term story. Obviously, injuries will happen. There doesn?t need to be a really specific week-by-week plan. There just needs to be a blueprint. Decide who will be tentatively headlining over the next year. Future headliners need to be protected going into title programs. That way the title programs seem like a culmination designed to determine the best wrestler in the promotion rather than just a match thrown together to sell a pay-per-view. 3. Young wrestlers with talent need to be protected. WWE has had a major problem creating stars in recent years, and a lot of this has to do with the way they have handled young wrestlers with talent. The first key is not to call them up until they are ready. It?s befuddling why WWE wouldn?t listen to someone with as much experience and wisdom as Jim Cornette when he says who is ready and who isn?t ready for WWE. The old cliche rings true: there is no second chance to make a first impression. Fans will view wrestlers brought up before they are ready negatively, and it will make it much harder for them to get over. The other key is that the wrestlers with potential need to be protected coming up through the card. WWE understands this concept, because Vince McMahon has done it for a long time. This is a point where long-term booking can help. When a new wrestler comes in who they know they want to push to the top, they should have a few feuds planned where the new wrestler will consistently win and move up the card. If the push isn?t taking, then you reevaluate. But going week to week and having the wrestler accrue a bunch of losses cuts off their development. 4. Main event talent needs to be protected. It seems the trend on Smackdown this year has been that the champion loses constantly, and anyone being groomed to be champion likewise loses constantly. This makes it exceedingly hard to sell pay-per-views, because fans have already seen the main eventers lose. Part of the reason the PPV with Great Khali vs. Undertaker did surprisingly strong numbers was because viewers couldn?t imagine either man losing. Thus they wanted to see where things were going to go. It isn?t that hard to enact that model for most PPV main events. You just protect the guys who are in the main event, or the people who are going to be in the next couple main events. If both main event wrestlers have won eight straight television matches, viewers will be compelled to order the PPV to see who is going to emerge victorious. If they are both 5-3 over that period, the intrigue is gone. 5. Physiques and size need to be de-emphasized. WWE continually grew in popularity during the 1997-2001 period when they pushed smaller and smaller performers. With serious competition gone after that, WWE stopped taking seriously rising young talent that doesn?t have size. Instead, WWE has been bringing in lots of big guys with physiques who have little charisma, talking ability or wrestling ability. Physique can help a wrestler, but in 2006 it is a distant fourth in significance to the other three. It would be one thing if WWE needed wrestlers to have three of the four, or if physique and size made a difference with close cases. However, size appears to be a cutoff point for the most part as far as talent that will be brought in with any real push. The result is a talent roster that in no way resembles the best collection of talent in the United States. There is no excuse for that given the WWE?s resources. 6. Scripted promos have to go. The Mick Foley vs. Ric Flair program has been a refreshing switch from most WWE programming, and has produced a much more compelling program than one would expect from a pair of aging stars who have seen better days. Almost all of that has to do with the interviews, which have been sharp, strong and real. Too many promos these days feature wrestlers saying things that you just don?t buy that they would say. Delivery suffers, and wrestlers don?t improve on the mic. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross realized in the nineties that the best wrestlers are extensions of their real personalities. Wrestlers need to be allowed to show their real personalities, and that will come from giving them a set of points to hit rather than a set of lines to deliver. It also helps that wrestlers for the most part understand how to sell a program, while a lot of the writers putting together promos are not long-term fans and don?t have a feel for how to talk people into the seats. 7. Results need to matter. The majority of WWE matches don?t establish that one wrestler is better than the other. It?s very hard to get people to pay to see wrestling matches if the results feel unimportant. Yet WWE undermines the significance of results every show many times. It?s fine to have contested finishes, run-ins, flukes and screw-jobs. However, these have to be the exception, not the rule. If a wrestler will be in the same position after a match regardless of whether they win or lose, why should fans care about the result? The general rule for PPV matches should be that wrestler A says he will beat wrestler B, and wrestler B says he will beat wrestler A. One of them proves he is right by winning the match, and that win allows him to keep his title or sets him up for a future match against a bigger star or champion. There is a world of variation that can be had in that most basic of outlines, but the bottom line is there need to be stakes involved. 8. Less is more. This is the most important point of all. As WWE PPV buys and TV ratings have declined, the WWE has needed to take steps to compensate. The best route would be to address the creative problems that have led to that decline. Instead, WWE has increased its output. WWE has taken on more television, and runs more PPVs. This provides a short term boost while doing long term damage. It is the equivalent of a developing nation getting rid of its debt by simply printing more currency. WWE has way too much television right now, and it will be exceedingly hard to increase interest in the product with resources spread so thin and individual hours of television feeling so insignificant. It is much more likely that there will be a burnout effect. PPV buys are in an even more precarious situation. There are too many WWE PPVs, and they don?t feel special. UFC went in less than a year from consistently losing to WWE on US PPV to consistently beating them. WCW saw its PPV buys collapse from the beginning of 1998 to the beginning of 1999. If fans decide WWE PPVs are no longer worse buying, it will be very hard to change their opinions on this. Short term, cutting back on PPVs and TV will hurt the bottom line. But WWE is driving towards a brick wall, and pushing down harder on the gas pedal is not the solution. Nothing here is revolutionary. It?s just common sense, and most of these philosophies have been followed by successful wrestling promotions. Most of these points shouldn?t even need to be made because they are so obvious, but WWE isn?t following simple maxims such as the importance of matches and protecting stars these days. With these corrections would not necessarily come PPV, TV and house show improvement. WWE still needs to present compelling characters in compelling storylines. However, these are important and common sense changes that have needed to be made for a long time. It?s hard to get the little things right when you have lost sight of the big things. Feedback: [email protected] http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/h...t.asp?aID=17114 He doesn't say anything overly original but I found it interesting. Everything he says should be common sense for the WWE but it's not at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JHawk Posted August 17, 2006 Report Share Posted August 17, 2006 I would add one more thing to that: Separate booking teams for each brand. Three different brands, and lots of times they don't even feel like different shows, just the same shows with the names and faces different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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