New Viewers

Scott,

I've been reading your wrestling blog for a couple months, and I was curious what you think the WWE can do to bring more new fans in. 

My wife and I just started watching this year.  We're nerdy type people so we gravitated toward the websites and an analytical view of wrestling pretty quickly, but I still get the sense that we enjoy the product a lot more than long time fans do--maybe we're just less jaded, and still surprised by things others wouldn't be.

In any case, it seems like bringing in new fans shoudl be a key part of the WWE's strategy, but I don't see them doing much outreach to prospective viewers.  I firmly believe most people would enjoy wrestling if they would give it a shot, but most people just thhink of it as "stupid" and "fake."

I knwo what sorts of things make more invested fans happier, but there's got to be mroe the WWE can do to reach out to people like me and my wife, who just had to give it a shot--now we watch Raw, Smackdown, Main Event, and NXT every week, along with various documentaries and old PPVs.  If they limit themselves to reaching out to current fans for Network subscriptions, they're never expanding their brand.

--Kevin

​That's some impressive dedication.  I can hardly stand to sit through an episode of Smackdown, let alone a whole week of programming.  But then I'm old and jaded and still feel like the peak of wrestling was WCW Saturday Night in 1986. 

Wrestling is a weird animal, in that it's very soap-operatic and people either tend to get it or don't get it. The main problem is that the stories aren't connecting with people and there's no real larger than life characters for people to relate to or get invested in.  They need to find someone to capture the imagination of the general public again, which was looking to be Randy Orton briefly before they inexplicably took him off TV to shoot his movie.  They can shill the Network's price point and put displays in K-Mart all they want, but until there's someone people want to see and a story they want to get invested in, they're gonna be sitting at their 2.7 maximum rating.​