SLAM! Wrestling Editorial: What the ratings really mean
By JOHN POWELL -- SLAM! Wrestling
Served up week after week for our consumption, those trivial weekly
wrestling ratings are an annoyance to me. Numbers thrown out there without
any context to assist us in determining the importance of the information.
With nothing to compare the stats to we are left with only one chapter to
peruse through. The rest of the story remains untold.
Wrestling fans have been led to believe that those weekly grappling shows
we know and love are unstoppable ratings juggernauts laying waste to the
competition. That may be true in the extended cable industry which has a
limited viewership. The numbers they generate in that market are
impressive. The WWF's SmackDown! show alone has been cited as the reason
why UPN hasn't tanked. However, if we were to measure them up against
regular prime time, basic cable programming, we would start to see that the
situation is similar to if The Rock were to join some indy federation on
the outskirts of New Mexico. The sobering revelation is they are big fishes
in a very small ponds.
The most watched wrestling program and cable show currently is of course,
Raw Is War. That's according to the Nielsen Media Research Company, the
industry's leading source of weekly television ratings. By dividing Raw
into two parts (Raw Is War 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and War Zone 10:00 p.m.
to 11:00 p.m.), the WWF's flagship show gets counted as two separate shows.
In the latest Nielsen cable ratings (May 8th to 14th), War Zone was the
Number One show receiving a 4.9 rating. Since each Nielsen ratings point
equals 1,008,000 households, 4.99 million homes turned on War Zone.
Pretty cool, huh? Not really. Its main competition in that time slot, the
emergency service drama, Third Watch on NBC, picked up an 8.1.
Raw Is War with a 4.6 (4.65 million homes) fares even worse. Ally McBeal on FOX
(7.9), Everybody Loves Raymond on CBS (11.4) and Law And Order on NBC (12.2) swallowed it
whole.
Nitro's overall rating of a 2.3 (2.279 million homes) didn't even come
close to amassing any sort of challenge to the basic cable networks on
Mondays. ECW On TNN with it's point zero to one ratings can't come close to
harming Boy Meets World (3.5) on Friday nights.
On the star-studded Thursday nights, SmackDown! is battered. Friends on NBC
(20.0), Frasier on NBC (22.1) and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ABC (12.4) clean up
in a big way. SmackDown! received a 4.7, placing it 66th on Nielsen's Prime
Time Ratings listing. That's tied with an episode of Cops on FOX, 7th Heaven on The WB and
FOX's Thursday Night Movie, True Lies. SmackDown! did manage to win out
over such shows as Futurama on FOX (3.7), Buffy The Vampire Slayer on The WB (3.4) and
Dawson's Creek on WB (3.0). Basically SmackDown! has more viewers than anything
on the Warner Brothers network (WB) and UPN.
Stacked up against mainstream prime time programming Raw Is War has as many
people watching it as King Of The Hill on FOX (4.6) might. War Zone has close
counterparts in Early Edition on CBS (4.9) and 7th Heaven on The WB (4.7). Nitro shares the
same numbers as Charmed on The WB on Sunday nights (2.0) and Felicity on The WB (2.0). ECW On
TNN soundly thrashes episodes of Diagnosis Murder and the Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire? rip-off, Twenty-One on NBC.
So what's this all mean? That we as wrestling fans shouldn't let our heads
get too big. In the grand scheme of things, wrestling is an extended cable
cash cow. The television industry as a whole though isn't feeling the heat.
Wrestling's popularity is holding it's own against cable networks who are
still establishing themselves. Grappling on the tube is beating out some of
these high-priced Hollywood productions that take days to film. That's
something to cheer about. Those veterans though are pinning us left, right
and centre.
If I have learned one lesson in my years as a film critic and it is that
ratings mean jack. You can't judge the caliber of a film by the box office
stats released every Monday morning. Those numbers are indicative of a
film's financial success. What they sure don't reveal is whether a motion
picture is worth seeing or not. Titanic hauled in $601 million, Home Alone
$285 million and Grease $182 million smackeroos during their stints at
movie houses to place them on the Top All Time Highest Grossing Movies
list. Enough said.
Monster ratings are sign of widespread popularity and not much else. The
product (a movie, television show, a book, a CD) has been accepted by a
large portion of the population. As I write this 'N Sync and the Backstreet
Boys hold prominent positions on the The Billboard Top 200 Chart. Danielle
Steel's The Wedding closes out Chapters' Top 10 Fiction Books in Canada and
the crapfests Random Hearts and Double Jeopardy can be found on the Top Ten
DVDs.
Following the ratings can provide die-hard federation loyalists with more
stones for their slings. That's about it. Mainstream popularity translated
into mega ratings doesn't necessarily equal quality, folks.
Case closed.
