Bad Booking Rants on 3-Hour RAWS

As I am starting my creative oil so to speak, I read this article on my desktop. I nearly bang my head on my desk.

Just fresh off the presses:

WWE RAW is going three hours PERMANENTLY starting July 23rd. That day also just so happens to be the 1,000th episode of the program.

An additional news piece came in about the official press release. Vince McMahon touts this as how it will be the next in line for a new generation of interactive television where fans can help create the show.

I’m thinking, “WHY?!?!?!?”

RAW in it’s current two-hour form is a boring mess. While I had noted in the PG post that WWE had been trying to make a better product, it has regressed severely since the ‘YES’ fad and the return of Brock Lesnar.

Worse yet, WWE (from what I’ve read but not confirmed) has a new outlook on television where literally storylines change week from week, i.e: pushes are suddenly halted and angles have loose endings.

Three hours.

REALLY?

I have enough trouble going through RAW in the first place. Never mind the fact I intentionally skip the second hour for more sleep: the first hour lulls me to sleep worse than the 2000 Daytona 500. If you NASCAR haters really want to see a race that’s 500 miles of cars going in a circle, that one is essentially it! 

Think of it this way: We may have the opportunity to see a half hour CM Punk match every week. No problem. At the same time, we could see a dance-off competition between Brodus Clay and Vickie Guerrero last that same amount of time.

And what would that extra hour be? It’s rumored to be a pre-show, but I doubt it. Vince wants that to be a rambling hour to be sure. Extra long promos for the hell of it!
We all know how Nitro’s three hour shows were. They essentially turned into Gilligan’s Island shipwrecks where three hours turned into eternity!

This ‘new’ three-hour format will not work. The sporadic three hour RAWs with special gimmicks were tough, but now they’ll become permanent fixtures? Ughh, someone pass me the Grey Poupon!
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ADDITION (6/22/17): I still stand by everything I have said all that time ago.

The WWE landscape has changed a lot during this time. We have the brand split again, the main event scene is dominated by people you would have seen on tape-trading years ago, NXT is kicking ass, and we have regular programming on the WWE Network that outshines most of what airs on the USA Network.

Yet RAW, with its direction akin to a cow looking at an oncoming train, is still three damn hours long. Not full of potentially exciting in-ring action, but of recaps, bullshittery, and maybe a notable match that should be saved for the big events on the Network.
I understand the politics behind it, plus the ever-present ad dollars behind it, but literally its just too much of too many things that never get enough attention.

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Now here’s a video of bodies going through tables!

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