Ratings thoughts
By Scott Keith on 24 October 2012
We know that WWE doesn't take TNA seriously as competition, but here's a question: at what point do the ratings become comparable enough that they have to? For example, as much as we joke about Aces and 0.8s, 0.8 looks a lot different next to a 2.5 than it does next to a 4.0.
In a related question, how weak can the current RAW product get before Spike and Dixie roll the dice and make another run at a live show on Monday? Maybe they try a one-off special event on a Monday to see how they do, possibly to coincide with a European tour when RAW is taped anyway. Or do you think the beating they got last time precludes any future attempts?
I think Spike is totally happy with Impact anchoring Thursday for them and no longer has any designs on taking a run at WWE. And the thing is, if the current RAW product gets much weaker (like sub 2.0 weaker) there's very real danger of USA not wanting to bother carrying them with those ratings. At the very least, you'd see the show slashed to an hour and budgets reduced to 1995 levels, because most of the money for the bells and whistles comes right from the network and not from Vince's pockets. Even now you can notice budget trimming like less pyro and such.
Really, the show BADLY needs an overhaul, because the product has gotten really dated and everything from 2008 (the onset of the HD era) to the present looks exactly the same. Like, literally you can take a show from one year and drop it into another without the slightest cosmetic difference. I think they need to do like the NXT set and pare it down to the bare screen (like in the early RAW is WAR days) and get rid of all the extra seizure-inducing screens on the side, and maybe mute the color palette a bit. The show is just so LOUD and garish, which makes watching it for three hours such a headache-inducing exercise in futility for me. None of this will ever happen, I know, but I'd really love NXT but with bigger stars and a bigger arena.