Russo is joined on today’s show by Big Vito.
Russo opens today’s show by mentioning that he was a part of Rocky Mountain Pro Wrestling’s television taping over the weekend, and he thought it went great. He notes that there are a bunch of kids on that roster who’d never been on television before and had no experience working for a hard camera and under those circumstances this taping was as good as could be.
One thing he realized during those tapings is that WWE’s television model has been broken for a long time. He thinks they need to shut down, adjust and start over. He believes if your wrestling show is one hour long, it’s very difficult to make a bad show. After commercials you have 45 minutes of television time, and that’s the perfect amount of time for today’s viewers who have no attention span.
He doesn’t think it’s possible to produce a bad hour of wrestling programming, no matter what talents you’re using. USA Network is selling advertising and wants the programming to be longer, but that’s just greedy in Russo’s opinion. He thinks if the show was an hour long more people would watch it and they’d be able to charge more for that hour of advertising.
He understands that it’s a business and USA Network has to make money, but he’s sure a one-hour program will draw more viewers. He points out that cutting it from 3 hours to 2 hours won’t change anything because WWE can’t write 3 hours of programming and they can’t write 2 hours either. It needs to be a one hour show in order for things to change.
Out of a 3-hour RAW, Russo suspects there’s 42 minutes of important programming – important matches and segments that they need to get on the show. The rest is just filler and that’s when they lose people, and he thinks WWE needs to cut this filler programming.
Russo informs that he’s been watching NXT lately, and that show is bearable because it’s only an hour. Even though there’s not enough storytelling or vignettes for his liking, he’s able to sit through a wrestling-heavy show because it’s only an hour in length.
If WWE were to put NXT’s product on USA Network right now for an hour followed by a 2-hour RAW, he thinks the one hour of NXT would nearly match the 2-hour RAW in terms of ratings. Vito agrees, noting that if NXT added a few more vignettes and storylines, NXT would be able to sustain itself as a stand-alone program on USA Network.
Russo says that WWE’s inability to adjust and keep up with the times has always been a big problem for them. He points out that they’re constantly behind the curve because viewership habits in 2018 are drastically different than in years past. He also notes that the same people are making all the decisions in WWE, and they all live within the ‘”wrestling bubble”. That’s why they’re always behind the curve.
Russo says his biggest issue with WWE is they don’t try new things. Sure, they’re making money, but they’re the only game in town so they better be making money in his opinion. He wonders how much money they’d be making if they changed with the times and put out a good product.
Vito points out that Russo tried a bunch of new things when he was head of creative during the attitude era. Although Russo fields some criticism now for a handful of the decisions he made back then, a whole bunch of new viewers were tuning in each week during that era to see what would happen on RAW.
That sums up today’s episode of Vince Russo’s The Brand. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!
