Ratings Smackdown

[Guest thebigjig]

The news about teens not watching wrestling is in full swing this morning, with AOL's welcome menu featuring a link in the lower left hand corner entitled "Ratings Smackdown: Teens not watching wrestling" This of course leads to the reuters story that made the rounds yesterday I believe.

 

Teen exodus body-slams ratings

 

By John Dempsey

 

NEW YORK (Variety) - The Rock has gone to the movies, Stone Cold Steve Austin is on ice and huge numbers of teenage boys have turned away from World Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE) signature primetime shows "Raw Is War" and "Smackdown."

 

The Nielsen numbers have body-slammed Vince McMahon, chairman of WWE, and his wife Linda, the CEO. For the first 5-1/2 months of the year, "Smackdown," has lost 35% of its 12-to-17-year-old males compared with the same period in 2001. The show, UPN's two-hour bellwether Thursday at 8, has also seen its household ratings fall by 10%.

 

For "Raw Is War," which airs on TNN Mondays from 8 to 10, the desertion rate in males 12-17 is 19% year to year. The decline in households is 6%.

 

"With the Rock making like Arnold Schwarzenegger on the big screen, the WWE doesn't have the big-draw, marquee wrestler to keep the kids enthralled," said Garnett Losak, VP and director of programming for Petry Media, which represents TV-station clients in their programming decisions.

 

While the Rock's career is soaring (Universal's "Scorpion King" has grossed more than $90 million in U.S. theaters), Steve Austin, another star wrestler, walked out after a disagreement with the WWE and then got into hot water with the San Antonio cops for allegedly beating up his wife Debra, who's also his manager.

 

Another problem for the WWE is that the attention span of teenage boys keeps getting shorter and shorter.

 

"You've got extreme sports like the X Games drawing young men, reality shows like 'American Idol' and 'Dog Eat Dog' cropping up all over the place and a whole array of video games," said David Carter, a principal in the Los Angeles-based Sports Business Group.

 

Bill Carroll, VP and director of programming for Katz Television, another TV-station rep firm, said UPN's dropoff is attributable, at least in part, to tougher competition on Thursday from CBS's "Survivor" and "CSI," both big hits that have attracted some of the "Smackdown" viewers.

 

Overall, "The declines by the WWE don't appear to be any more drastic than the declines we're seeing across all sports," Carroll said, adding that he uses the word "sport" advisedly since all of the matches follow a preordained script devised by a cadre of writers on the WWE payroll.

 

But David Carter is still convinced that "the McMahons are going to have to develop new talent and manufacture new personalities" -- which is precisely what the WWE is doing, according to the federation's exec VP and chief marketing officer Julie Hoffman.

 

She cites the casting under way for the third cycle of 13 episodes of the MTV primetime series "Tough Enough," which puts wrestling candidates through "Survivor"-type challenges, with the winner landing a contract with the WWE.

 

The WWE has two other outlets for the incubation of new talent, both weekly hours on TNN: "WWE Velocity" Saturday at 10 p.m., leading into "WWE Confidential" at 11.

 

Hoffman said the WWE's goal is to make "Raw" and "Smackdown" into two distinct programs, each drawing on its own stable of wrestlers, with very little cross-pollination between the two. The cross-pollination will occur with the monthly pay-per-view events, featuring grudge matches between the stars of "Raw" and the stars of "Smackdown." A well-promoted PPV wrestling extravaganza will typically gross between $10 million and $20 million, according to statistics published by SET Pay Per View.

 

But if "Raw" and "Smackdown" continue to experience Nielsen erosion, Carroll said Vince McMahon will go all out to get the viewers back. "McMahon is a master at adapting to changing circumstances," Carroll said. "He's not only a showman, but one of the savviest marketers in the business."