WWE Raw Celebrity GMs Should Only Be Used Sparingly
After watching Bob Barker do a tremendous job at being a game show host last night on Raw, I started to wonder how much WWE was going to continue to bend over so that these celebrity GMs don’t look like idiots on national TV.
They are definitely working hard to try to make the celebrity segments look half way decent, but it’s at the expense of their own PPV product.
Now, I completely understand that the WWE is going to make the USA network happy by both looking more major league by having “celebrities” on their shows, and by slightly increasing the ratings any way they can. Hell, they used to do it themselves at WrestleMania every year by booking celebrity guests.
But by using up so much time during the show to make the celebrities entertaining, it seems to me that they are sacrificing their own ability to make money from their PPVs. Again, making USA happy is definitely a major goal as is making your brand look more major league. But after watching the Bob Barker show last night, I’m not sure that I necessarily wanted to watch the upcoming Breaking Point PPV show this weekend, or buy Barker’s book instead.
I think they need to slow down the celebrity hosts and possibly use them twice a month at most, and never during the last week of a serious build to a PPV show. This way, they won’t go through as many hosts, and there will be a better balance in both trying to be entertaining and “Hollywood”, and giving us compelling reasons to buy their PPV shows. Both major angles coming out of the show with Randy Orton and John Cena and DX and Legacy were serious and as important as you can expect when half of the show was about goofy “The Price Is Right” segments. I just wonder how much more compelling they would’ve been if they were given more time and energy.
In no way do I think they should discontinue the celebrity host idea, especially with my girl Trish hosting next week, but the bloom will soon be off the rose and these “celebs” might not mean much unless they slow it down. I think a happy medium should be found.
I’m interested in what others think about the celebrity host idea and whether or not they should continue to do it every week.
What we have here is typical WWE in recent years – which is a shame. WWE sees Raw like SNL does – where rather than build to a PPV, they just want to have entertaining weekly shows. This will hurt the PPV business, but its apparent that they dont give a damn.
The rating has gone up, but what they fail to see is that the rating is only up because of curiosity from the media as to which celeb will be on and/or what they will be doing on the show and NOT tuning in to see any of THEIR stars. People don’t care about fucking Santino and allathat horseshit – they just wanna see the celebs and what they do. It won’t equal a single buy. They had buys with the Shaq thing and couldnt even do THAT.
IDIOTS!
I don’t think the ratings are up because the media is curious about the celebs. I haven’t looked at any numbers, but my guess is that it’s fans who are cursory fans who feel that adding a celeb guest like Bob Barker makes the show more interesting. But those guys aren’t buying PPVs.
Here’s what really bothered me about that show last night. After the semi-cliff hanger that they gave us the week before, we opened with goofy stuff rather than a follow-up to the angle. I wanted to see what Cody was going to say about Randy busting up his dad, not whether or not Santino knows how much a DVD costs.
I must admit that I am enjoying these more often than not. I feel like I should hate the idea, but i just don’t. I think its partly because I have completely disconnected from taking WWE seriously, and partly because I hate the regular GM gimmick so much; It’s just so played out. The guest adds some intrigue to the show at least. It may not help build feuds but I at least am finding Raw fun.
On a side note, I thought they did a decent enough job of building the PPV this week. I actually am some what interested in DX/Legacy, Orton/Cena, and maybe even the tag title match. It was a bit of a rushed build, but oh well, better late than never.
I agree with you, in a sense. I feel they have compelling programs and I just feel ripped off because it should be more than it is.
I think the celeb GM stuff is totally fine. I just think they should do serious shows when they need to, and then go back to them.