Guest BoboBrazil Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Smackdown finished last night with a 3.3 final rating, which has to be a huge blow for a company hoping that the return of Rock would spark a rise in the show. Instead, the much-hyped return led to the seventh lowest rating in the history of the show. Three of those seven are holiday ratings that probably shouldn't be fairly counted. -Dave Meltzer Wow, I thought it would atleast do a 3.5.
Guest Nezbyte Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Jesus, SD! is pretty well fucked. Meh, just keep going till the contract runs out.
Guest bob_barron Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Vince needs to stop worrying about the ratings and build long term storylines tht will draw fans back in
Guest KoR Fungus Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Eh it'll still probably be this week's highest rated UPN show. Yeah a 3.3 is horrible by WWE standards, but by UPN standards it's amazing. Don't expect UPN to cancel it anytime soon, if ever.
Guest oldschoolwrestling Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Vince needs to stop worrying about the ratings and build long term storylines tht will draw fans back in I think they are somewhat doing that. Jamie Knoble, Team Canada, Edge's hopefully turning, come to mind. The thing that worries me is that I think these stories are building with out them realizing it, meaning they'll get dropped for no apparent reason.
Guest FakeRazor Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Just as I suspected, The Rock has no effect on the ratings. Ratings are down because the shows SUCK, not because The Rock hasn't been on.
Guest converge241 Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 "Vince needs to stop worrying about the ratings and build long term storylines tht will draw fans back in " amen. hopefully this latest snafu makes Vince realize that the hotshot is d-e-a-d
Guest Brian Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 "Just as I suspected, The Rock has no effect on the ratings. Ratings are down because the shows SUCK, not because The Rock hasn't been on." Last two weeks have been fine and SmackDown seems to have a hell of a lot more long-term direction than RAW.
Guest Prince Paul Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 The compnay as a whole needs a makeover. The question is, when will Vince realize this? I missed 45 minutes of Smackdown last night, and didn't miss a beat, and didn't really give a shit either. That's says alot, as I've always stuck by the company, even in the 90's. They will start chipping away at their loyal fanbase soon.
Guest chirs3 Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 I guessed 3.2, so w00t! Anybody know what the ratings for the past 2 weeks were? I wanna see how much, if at all, Rock spiked it.
Guest KoR Fungus Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 <<<Anybody know what the ratings for the past 2 weeks were? I wanna see how much, if at all, Rock spiked it.>>> Somebody else posted these in another ratings thread: June 20, 2002: 3.1 June 27, 2002: 3.3 July 4, 2002: 2.0 So it looks like Rock's return didn't do much of anything. The July 4 number is the lowest SD number ever by far (the second lowest ever is 2.9), but that can be attributed to the holidays. The share was about normal, so it just means a lot less people were watching TV. Before that, the show was doing numbers in the low 3s, just like it is now. So Rock had little to no impact, doh.
Guest Zero_Cool Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Well there are some bright spots right now, Jamie Noble's character and motive is starting to get over with the fans. Team Canada has two great wrestlers and a stud/hosse/young ox/pitbull. Why is everyone predicting an Edge heel turn and almost waiting for it? He was finally getting over in the Angle feud and now everyone wants him to turn on Hogan..even though that would destroy all of his momentum and his credibility.
Guest myburninghammer Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 I don't think you can pin anything against the Rock because he had nothing to do with the rating...the WWF has had at least a half-year's opportunity to woo/win people back before and they blew it repeatedly to the point where even the Rock was irrelevant. Whatever audience they've lost ain't coming back; they'll have to find a new one if they're to climb out of the hole they've dug.
Guest oldschoolwrestling Posted July 12, 2002 Report Posted July 12, 2002 Why is everyone predicting an Edge heel turn and almost waiting for it? He was finally getting over in the Angle feud and now everyone wants him to turn on Hogan..even though that would destroy all of his momentum and his credibility. I think its because for the past two shows, he seems to be looking at Hogan funny. Especially when Hogan handed him the American flag. I don't know if anyone noticed it yesterday, but he seemed to be looking at him funny again. And we all want Team Canada to succeed, and he would help it get over.
Guest Raven_Effect01 Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 That number should tell Vince to start building up deserving talent on Smackdown better and to get a revamped creative team that can build good storylines up well.
Guest greeneb22 Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 I believe the ratings are down because of the lack of competition in the business and also the ratings for Smackdown would be higher if everyone actually got Smackdown on cable. I mean I would kill to see Smackdown, but since I don't have UPN, thats not going to happen. I think the Smackdown! ratings would go up if it were a live show on a different station.
Guest GenerationNever Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 Expect Jim Ross to eat some crow(with his BBQ sauce)on WWE.com and tell us why exactly the "brand extension" failed.
Guest Austin3164life Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 What the WWE needs is not "quick fixes" to bounce the ratings, because that bounce can go either high or low, or wont bounce at all. This is one of those instances that the ratings didn't bounce at all, even with the return of a high drawing wrestler like The Rock. I'm not going to sit here and try and conjure up a remedy for Smackdown, but I think we all know that Vince and the Creative Engine needs to concoct some decent and solid feuds in all spectrums on the shows. The Main Events, Upper Card, Midcard, and Cruiserweight divisions all need fine-tuning. This summer can be the period where they do just that. That is all.
Guest 4Life Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 It's simple. No WCW, no Ratings! No Monday Night Wars. Do I miss those days or what?
Guest candie45 Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 First off, the Rock was on TV just 2 or 3 weeks back. The fans already saw the Rock not too long ago. If it had been the first big break Rock had taken like last year's was, and he wasn't seen in a WWE ring for that whole time, then yes I can see the big spike in ratings. But no one really cared since most saw him on Raw and maybe KOTR a few weeks ago. I can say that I missed the first hour and a half of SD this week. And I didn't really care. It's not like I was just sitting home and just decided not to watch it, but I was doing other things with my friends and not at my house. I just know that the WWE needs to really get their act together and get the problems in the back sorted out. I know that there is a ton of talent and everyone is busting their ass out in the ring, but there are definitely writing staff problems that need to be fixed.
Guest Vitamin X Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 Well I'm pretty glad myself that Rock didn't spike the ratings that much, because that would indicate that the majority of the WWF's fans are Rock marks and Rock marks only, and that's very disturbing if the ONLY interesting part of ANY WWF show in the past 3 years is the Rock, because that is FAR from true. And as for Smackdown! being fucked? Well, this again goes back to what I was saying about RAW having an awesome midcard but no main event, and Smackdown! beign the opposite.. You need a midcard to have a main event, not the other way around, and that's Smackdown's problem.
Guest MrRant Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 Eh.. its also the summer.. people you know... DO things since weather is nice. 3's are decent right now and they just need to work on stabilizing the ship.
Guest Vitamin X Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 No they need to work on making us look forward to things instead of going blah Smakdown!'s on whatever I can miss it... Having that "anything can happen in the WWF" attitude again would be awesome. The only time it's ever itneresting is the pay per views (no storylines, only the matches with the awesome workers that WWE DOES possess), and sometimes the RAW and Smackdowns around the pay per view sicne thats when the matches get set up.
Guest MrRant Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 No they need to work on making us look forward to things instead of going blah Smakdown!'s on whatever I can miss it... Having that "anything can happen in the WWF" attitude again would be awesome. The only time it's ever itneresting is the pay per views (no storylines, only the matches with the awesome workers that WWE DOES possess), and sometimes the RAW and Smackdowns around the pay per view sicne thats when the matches get set up. And the way to do that is to stabilize first and then build. Anything can happen type stuff can be bad because if they blow their load to early with out more people watching they could lose their chances. When they start seeing ratings increasing a little for about 3 months or so (not big gains but little improvements through the weeks) then shock us and get us really talking.
Guest Vitamin X Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 I think the "anything can happen" theory worked because of the shock. Everyone knows about the David Arquette thing in WCW, it's the most infamous shock value in the history of professional wrestling. Russo thought that could get ratings, and I'm not sure, but I think it did get people wondering "OK, this has to be a joke what the fuck is going on in WCW?!" I'm not suggesting they give the WWF Title to Seann William Scott, but it would be cool to see somethings a little more surprising than your typical random heel versus random face match. Whcih is why I always enjoy the month of May, because for the past two years they've been giving away ppv-quality matches on free tv. This year it was RVD/Eddy on RAW and Angle/Edge on Smackdown!, last year it was Jericho/Regal in the cage, Benoit/Austin in Edmonton, jsut a bunch of awesome stuff. OK I'm rambling again. Enough.
Guest graph9 Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 This is like the millionth time that the Rock has returned..it's probably not something that people look forward to anymore..Plus he says bascially the same thing and that is getting very tired.. on Smackdown It came off 2 me as looking forced..and trying to hard to get a reaction out of the crowd..they need to do something to refresh his character..make him turn heel..because i always thought that he was better at that anyway..especially during the nation days.. I think some real competition like the NWA getting a national tv deal will force the W W Wee Wee..to come up with something fresh..because it's clear without anyone to challenge them..they have gotten lazy..
Guest jester Posted July 13, 2002 Report Posted July 13, 2002 I think this Smackdown rating may be a little too early to tell. Now that Rock is back, I think the next two Smackdown ratings will tell the story. If they're low, then yep, Rock didn't help. If they climb, it's probably because word has got around. I said it before, they should have hyped a Rock MATCH for his return. Not just "The Rock is coming back." So what? Is he going to do anything when he gets here? Or is he just going to plug a bad movie and leave to make one of his own? Nothing so big like Rock vs. Undertaker, that should be left for a PPV. But Rock/Jericho would have been good. just a few days earlier, another big comeback listed all of five seconds. WWE comebacks aren't much to get excited about for marks. jester
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