Spotlight

Stephanie McMahon Reveals The Plan To Keep Viewers Tuned In For Three Hours On A Weekly Basis

Richard Gray July 23, 2012 WWE News 20 Comments

Variety is running a piece to promote the milestone 1000th episode of WWE Raw with quotes from Stephanie McMahon in it. Below is an excerpt:

“We’re going to use social media in a more enhanced fashion,” besides just promotion, Stephanie McMahon Levesque, executive VP, creative for WWE, told Variety. “Our fans will affect some type of content in the show every week.”

Doing so “keeps your audience tuned into the broadcast for the entire three hours,” she believes. And if it works, the move could pave the way for other shows considering ways to keep distracted auds from changing channels.

Click here to read the article in its entirety.

FREE Wrestling News App: Dirt Sheet - iPhone | Android | iPad

About The Author

Richard Gray

Richard Gray is the owner and editor of WrestlingNewsWorld.com. Covering the professional wrestling business since 1999, Richard holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from West Virginia University. He is also the owner of Gray Internet Technologies, LLC. and should be contacted with all business matters. You can friend him on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. Email him directly at [email protected].

George Takei

Why not some quality story lines and more violence to keep viewers interested instead of asking them to go to their computers and play with twitter while the show is on?
- An0n
  
  im sure you just want more guys in tights :p
  
  but agreed, quality stories and violence
- Ken
  
  Because they're after the casual, flavour of the moment sort of fans, you know, the ones attracted by bright colours and flashing lights, the ones who have a desperate desire to feel important and have some control over something because their social media filled lives really don't offer them any sort of control at all. You know… those fans.
  
  The WWE ceased to care about true wrestling fans the moment Vince bought WCW.
  - James
    
    Ken, I agree. They ceased to care about wrestling fans when Vince bought out WCW. They did their best when they had competition. Competition brought out the best in the writers, when we had that, more people watched from both shows. If you look at other products when you have products and people have to choose which is better, you have manufactures always trying to make theirs even better.
    
    We do not have it anymore, heck Vince doesn't talk about TNA, and mocks them by having wrestlers wear similar outfits or use their finishing moves. He mocks WCW in his "are you serious" youtube show.
    
    People complain about Cena, or PG, but this is business. Vince MdcMahon wants to run this as a business but he is a running it as a monopoly and those are bad for business. Competition, competition, competition.
    - Kevin
      
      And that's why I was excited when TNA moved to Monday nights. I wanted the wars to begin again; that's what made the shows so great. The competition between 2 top-notch companies was awesome, and pushed Vince to do better and better. Since he bought WCW, he's had no serious competition to make him push his company to greater heights. TNA could be that company, IF they'd ditch Hogan and Bischoff and bring in someone who knows what the hell they're doing.
- Razmos01
  
  Because for one…..its PG era, secondly….most people have laptops and internet phones so they can watch and use social media sites at the same time…..i have no third i think the first 2 pretty much sums it up
AnacondaVise

I'm still going to DVR it and skip the stuff I don't care about but nice try.
- Guy Landau
  
  That completely counts as ratings as far as I know, so mission accomplished by WWE I suppose.
  - Dave Hochstein
    
    Actually there are two ways the ratings are collected. A "viewing diary" where you fill out a form of what you watch as well as the times and channels. The other is using a "Set meter". Not every one has one. They call it "Statistical Sampling". I've given a very brief description of each way as I don't have the time to type it all out. But if you are curious and/or interested here's a link to a more in depth description of how it works. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings
    
    Basically, if you have not been contacted by Nielsen to track your viewing, it doesn't matter if you watch a show, record a show, or don't watch it all. You are not counted in the ratings.
    
    Richard, maybe you should make this a post on the main page for those who don't see it posted here in the comments but are curious as to how the TV ratings system works.
Ricky Valdez

Stephanie McMahon reveals how they will keep viewers tuned in for 3 hours. Boobies boobies boobies. Lol
- Chopper
  
  Her boobies equals ratings lol
Chris

Because we already have that on plenty of channels, it's keeping the audience engaged that is always the trick, and this seems to be wwe's new one. I was kind of expecting wwe to try bringing in other media, like musicians like they did at wrestlemania, try to broaden the shows out, something I thought McMahon was always trying to push for, will just have to see if it i'll work.
Three hours to me will always be just to long to hold someone's attention, so it's going to be interesting to see how they try.
Shawn

They will be back to 2 hours in no time when viewers start changing the channel because it gets to boring plus were right around the corner from the fall and that means football so wwe gets screwed when that’s on
adam

Most of the west coast is left out of the social media voting because we don’t get the telecast until its already off the air unless you have satellite cable. So most of the west coast doesn’t even matter
Michael

To keep attention give us violence I pray a legend goes on instinct and delivers a steel chair to the head and I miss the blood to it really did improve most matches
The arbiter

While this may be fine for WWE's US market, your international market doesnt really watch Raw live so could care less how interactive the show is.
- Miles
  
  World wrestling entertainment not east coast of America wrestling entertainment, in new Zealand or any other country for that matter, social media, fan interaction or any other gimmick aimed at live tv does not matter. Make it relevant to a world audience…maybe by not just having overseas wrestlers but by having wee wrestlers appearing in overseas promotions, Kiwi Pro Wrestling might be little league compared to wwe but both parties would gain from having a wwe talent even for just one match wrestle in New Zealand as an an example?
Morgan

This is dumb. I hope this crashes and burns in their faces by far one of the worst ideas they have ever had & they hav had sum pretty bad ones I mean like really?Really?bYay now we can get all the dumb wrestling fans that don’t deserve to even be called wrestling fans mess up the show with their dumb stuff. Just like how cyber sunday was In case they haven’t realized it yet, fan voting and contribution is a disaster waiting to happen, all they do is screw it all up Just make better storylines and stop with all the social media garbage and you’ll be on the right track
snap

It’s always good to take chances, but what may seem unfathomable to WWE is there ARE segments of their fanbase which is not interested in any way with the various social media outlets.

I, personally, do not care about Facebook, Twitter or Tout and have no plans to make use of them and I really could care less what happens to be “trending” at any particular point in time, that’s not why I watch. It has its uses, definitely, but it’s not something the whole show should be built around. It’s what makes SmackDown so different… a complete lack of the “Twitter obsession.”

I have rarely watched an entire episode of RAW at two hours, so I know for a fact that it will be a “pick and choose” scenario for me with three hours of RAW. If all else fails, at least NXT is just one hour.
Kacie

Want fans to tune it? Drop the damn pg rating and bring back tv-14.