Former WWE creative team member: Kevin Eck was recently a guest on The Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast. One of the topics that Eck spoke about was Vince McMahon changing his strategy for where he puts the main event of RAW.
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Over the past few months, we sometimes see WWE put their big segments at the end of the 9 o’clock hour that leads into the beginning of the 10 o’clock hour (EST). Here is what Eck had to say about that and how it differed from his time working for WWE:
“What’s happened recently is that I think—when you look at the ratings, you always see consistently the third hour drifts off, and you see a higher rating during the second hour, so I think we’re seeing a shift to where on Raw a lot of times, what is considered the ‘Main Event’ is taking place at the end of the 9 o’clock hour and is drifting towards the 10 o’clock hour. There is some prestige to appear at the end of the show, but I don’t think it’s the same to when I worked there, or with SmackDown, since it’s a 2 hour show. Vince [McMahon] has seen the ratings trend that people aren’t sticking around, no matter what they put at segment 15 and 16 in the long stretch just wasn’t doing so well, so why are you going to put your most important segment in the hour to where people are tuning out?”
Eck also referenced the Cruiserweight’s main eventing RAW several weeks ago. Some have said that it is because of Enzo’s popularity but it seems more like a new strategy from WWE. The end of the 9 o’clock hour featured the match between Roman Reigns and the Miz, which was the central storyline of the show:
“The old format, that I worked under, I can tell you that there would have been no chance in hell that Enzo Amore and the Cruiserweights would be in the final segment. If you want to watch the main event of the show, look at what is going on around 9:55 and crossing over the 10pm hour; which looks like what is most important to Vince McMahon on the show.”
WWE hasn’t completely moved to this strategy though as we saw two big surprises recently to close RAW. That would be the Shield backstage segment and Smackdown invading RAW. Will be interesting to keep track of this over the next several weeks.
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[h/t to Wrestling INC]