Found it interesting that Smackdown had the bigger PPV bump but its still a pretty tiny number compared to the usual 100k-200k range WWE gets for these bumps in recent years.

Stomping Grounds was a disaster in terms of driving interest for this week's set of shows.

The problem is percents yes. Absolutely. Didnt realize that needed to pointed out. Thats creating lies through math. Its one of the first things you go over in statistical analysis courses. Its very easy to create very misleading comparisons using percentages (like that tweet did.) It pretends that the pie is equal when the pie is is literally 1/12th being weighed against 1 whole.

Alarmingly dishonest.

Next week Taker could cause a slight bump -- but one trend lately has been RAW doing decent YT views and SD's YT views dropping consistently (since the Wildcard Era and brand blue essentially becoming RAW 2.0).

I always wonder how the USA Network views the 24/7 Title situation since it was one of their ideas to counter ratings sliding - and it plays great on social media but hasn't really moved RAW up on TV.

If you ever see someone averaging percentages take a second to check their math they're most likely trying to pull a fast one.

I’d say there’s some dishonesty in just showing the numbers and saying “down is down” and leaving it at that.

If someone took those networks, broke them down by every show, and then compared each individual show to WWE, would those be fair comparisons to you? It would eliminate the 24 hour vs 3 hour dilemma.

Lets say we did a survey on whether people like or do not like wrestling and the results are that 90% of children like wrestling however only 60% of adults like wrestling. So, can we claim that 75% of the population ( average = (90%+60%)/2 = 75% ) like wrestling?

This cannot be correct; we do not know anything about the sample size. Let's say there are 100,000 children and 400,000 adults surveyed. From those, 170,000 people do not like wrestling, while 330,000 like wrestling. Here, we can confirm that 90,000/100,000x100% = 90% of the children, and 240,000/400,000x100% = 60% of adults like wrestling.

So we are left with two answers. 66% (accurate calculation), and the 75% (inaccurate calculation). The averaging percentages can provide inaccurate results, and this is exactly what the tweet tries to do. Its awful math being masqueraded as a rebuttal when if you follow the math (and weight it against comparable data) it proves the opposite is true.

Also, the World Series, Super Bowl, NBA Finals numbers you posted on the last page... pretty dishonest.

The Youtube stuff has been a pretty good indicator of revealing what's been interesting from WWE but somewhat useless for actual tv. The biggest problems being its way easier to digest clips that are a few minutes long than watch a whole 3-hour show live. Another big problem is the bulk of WWE's Youtube views typically come from India (and China) which is meaningless for tv since WWE can't transition it into additional viewers nor are they generating huge sums of money from those views.

USA Network probably views the 24/7 stuff as a success since it means one of their ideas actually works even if it supposedly was the "least bad one" given. WWE just needs to find a way to transition it into becoming additional tv viewers that stick around.

Again not direct comparisons. Trends. Clear objectively verifiable trends. Major television staples are losing nearly 25% of their total audience year to year. With some rough math WWEs decline looks to be between 9-13% less than its key demo competitors but i havent (and dont even sort of have the time to) done anything exhaustive.


The problem is the data collection. Neilson is a dead metric. This is cavemen that havent discovered fire yet.

I really like youtube though as an analytic. If they would chop up entire shows and upload them in segements they would know exectly what was drawing eyeballs. I dont know how theyre using that tool but theres so much info YouTube offers them that advertisers would be very interested in.

How are attendances at sports games tracking?

The dishonesty lies in pointing out one year and calling it a trend. We're also 4 years removed from the highest rated Super Bowl of all time. If I had pointed that out as a "trend" 4 years ago (clearly the decline of television started much more than 4 years ago) then I assume you would have called that ridiculous.

The 3rd highest rated NBA finals game of all time happened a year after that. If I'd pointed that out as a "trend" 3 years ago, then I assume you would have called that ridiculous.

The World Series... Well, yeah there's not much to say about that. People don't care about baseball like they used to.

Also, quit trying so hard to distance yourself from "direct comparison-making". You literally just compared the percent of WWE's decline to the percent of other major television staples. You're participating in the direct comparison making whether you deny it or not. lol

The World Series is the 3rd most watched sporting even in the last 3 years only behind the Olympics and the Superbowl. Game 7 of the 2016 World Series was the most watched game in World Series history since 1991.

But Baseball World Series ratings have slipped since 1984. Spiked in 2016 because of the Cubs.

Not at all. The trend exists all over all of television. each network is down in annual views over a 5 year span. Its everywhere and the networks themselves, whi entire profit structure for 30+ years has been based off Neilson, are all acknowledging this. If you want to gloss over that so be it but when CBS drops neilson altogether because THATS how useless they view them you should take notice.


And I've objectively not directly compared them expect when i specifically directly compared and acknowledged that accordingly.


TV has no future and this is a mainstream concept wrestling fans are stubbornly refusing for some reason.

Its a broken metric. We dont know if viewership is down or not. technology has moved on and we havent updated our analytics. What i do know is the wwf is the 8th most subscribed YouTube channel. Thats real. Thats modern. Thats how most 15 and unders consume media. Not nielson boxes and watching usa.

Not a single viewing habit of mine is trackable by neilson analytics. The growing trend for 18-34s is to have never had cable. Even once. That trendis projected to be rule in the next 10 years.


How much of your viewing is trackable by Neilson. I bet very little. Why are you still following these numbers?

://variety.com/2019/digital/news/2019-cord-cutting-data-1203194387/


34% of US customers will cut the cord by the end of 2019. If you think this isnt where the viewership is going please offer the hot take. Im all ears.

I’m not glossing over anything. I’m not even arguing TV being a dying medium. I’m saying your sports comparison is insanely dishonest. Not only for the reasons I mentioned but ALSO because comparing the ratings of a single game from one year to the next and calling it a “trend” to make the point that major television staples are down around 25% is a asinine.

You realize the NFL’s ratings in general were actually UP last year. Sunday Night Football’s ratings were UP last year. Monday Night Football’s ratings were UP last year. Now if I tried to say “The NFL’s ratings were up last year while WWE’s continued to drop”, Im guessing you’d object to the comparison. Yet you think it’s totally fine to look at the championship games from one year and use those numbers to say...

You see the issue here?

Clearly i needed to spell things out more clearly. Thats a failure in my part.


When i post those numbers what is in my head is are we panicking about the failing ratings? Theyre huge numbers. Do we think the nba is about to fold? No. We dont even notice. Why do we not notice when we can pull at near random any set.of numbers from tv and see declining ratings but when rae does literally the same thing at a reasonably similar pace we think abandon ship?


Shows flawed. Has huge problems. These numbers are fucking JANK THOUGH. This isnt abnormal. Why are we worshiping nielson? Its dead. These numbers dont tell us anyrhing anymore. Theuve basically become a lottery at this point.


Nfls digital streaming was up 86% last year. Viewers havent left. We just lost track of them.

Well tbf viewers might have left who fucking knows. Point is nielson isnt an indicator if they have or havent.

Other than "we always have" is there any reason we're still using this in 2019?

Ftr with the championship games i literally picked those at random. i knew nothing about their ratings this year. i knew what the data trand was and rolled the dice. Every search i made "just happened" to back my play. A stunning coincidence? Or predictable data acts predictably?


I bet if we made a game of it and put 50 current shows in a hat ans you got points when a shows viewership year to date wasnt shrinking the winning score wouldbe less than 10

Nelson ratings have always been a misrepresentation. It takes a very small percent of the audience, and then assume that the viewing pattern of that small sample size would equate exactly to the viewing habits of the entirety of the United States.

Nielson has roughly 40,000 households with boxes that monitor viewing habits. Nelson estimates there are 120 million households with tvs, and about 305 million people that watch tv.

They take those 40,000 houses, break it down to age groups and census data for the number of people living in the houses, then use whatever formula they use to determine how much each person in the household means to their rating, i.e. a house with 5 people will count as 5 viewers, since they can't actually say who in the house watched a specific show, then they multiply those numbers by a percentage to represent that 305 million, and that gives you a rating.

So when Nielson says a show gained or lost 200,000 viewers, it's probably about 30 people who watched one week but not another.

It is a very small sample size that networks base so much on.

It's why they have evolved to look at other factors.

It's why Fox's deal REALLY isn't as big as everybody makes it seem. They bought 520 hours of live tv for just over a $Billion. That is roughly $2 million per hour of TV.

That is rock bottom prices for a network show, let alone a live one which in this day and age is more desirable.

Fox will have no overhead with Smackdown, they will cut a $4million check every week for 2 hours of TV they don't have to worry about or put any real effort into.

Yeah thats what a survey is. Problem is now we're doing a survey with a dead medium.


Imagine tracking phone usage and only using landlines.


Would you use that information to determine phone habits of girls 10-24? Coursenot. Youd a fucking idiot to do so.


Why are we turning to neilson to tell us what men 18-34 are watching? How the fuck would they know?

100% this. I literally watch nothing but live tv, which is wrestling and sports. Everything else I watch on Netflix, Hulu, and Prime Video. Even the news, I'd rather just read it online than watch CNN or Fox News.

Earlier this week someone said the movie "This is the End" was on FX. I love that movie so I decided to watch it. Did I watch it on FX??? Hell no, I watched it from my Prime Video library, uncensored, no ads, streaming on a Roku.

Point is I still actually watched the movie even though IF I had a Nielson box it would have not have counted me in the rating FX got for showing the movie that night.

Exactly. And theres a huge ammount of people that are consuming media this way. Especially inside their key demos where id wager more are doing this than arent

When i think of the single 20-something males i know i cant think many that are watching cable. Addmitedly thats confirmation bias but i dont think if we increased the sample size that the trend wouldnt present itself.

Thats just how we do it now. We all do, dont we?

And if we all do then doesnt that force us to ask some serious questions about how seriously we value this data?

"Surely, you can't be serious?"

Just add sixty-six and two-thirds <s>ch-</s> percents.

I am serious, and dont call me Shirley

Prob'ly the easiest would be to make the wrestling show a wrestling show instead of, as it was phrased in Wrestling Isn't Wrestling, "a show about a wrestling show". But that would be too much like work. And also make sense.

While WWE is on cable, they're playing the Nielson game. That's how their TV is going to be judged. If you don't want to be judged by your cable presence, get off cable, lol. It's true that people are cutting chords, and if the estimate is that 35% of cable's audience is going to cut, then you'd look at Raw's ratings, comparatively, with that in mind. Which is what most people do.

I don't know why WWE performing badly on a dying medium alleviates criticisms of its dwindling popularity. Being in a dying medium is itself a problem.

And yet those in the industry, whos entire business models have been based on neilson for decades, are moving away from Neilson.

And if you "look at RAWs ratings comparatively with the 35% drop off in mind " then viewership isnt down at all. You cant do that though because youd be averaging nonsequitor percentages and weve already been through the math on that.

For example wrestling has always done well in the south and the south is cord cutting less so without any data there's no reasonable way to ascertain what % is watching through other platforms. Its reasonable to conclude is less than 35% given historical data...but what do we actually know?

The only we can clearly say is they had a youtube video this week seen by twice the audience who watched the live show within 3 hours of the upload.

So something seems a bit off

I just dont understand how you lot arent questioning ratings when the entire industry is. There's a loyalty that is completely unearned.

And before im taken out of context again thats not a claim that theyre ratings are down 50% of the actual. Im meerly saying these numbers seems suspicious and objectively i feel like im missing a lot of data. Enough so that i wouldnt be so bold as to draw conclusions from either.

Nielsen also measures viewers on most digital and streaming services including Netflix, Hulu, Youtube TV, Prime Video, etc.

Also, Nielsen's cost ($10 million for CBS for example) vs measurement accuracy has been criticized in the TV industry for over a decade, but only by broadcasters who claim it under counts viewers, particularly in certain local markets, and thus result in lower ad rates being paid. Unless and until most or all of the ad agencies also stop using and paying Nielsen to determine what they charge broadcasters, Nielsen's impact on and importance to TV isn't going anywhere.

I don't have any stake in Nielsen or care what happens to them. I also don't doubt that their audience measurement ability is flawed or imperfect and that viewers are going and going to continue to move to streaming services and Youtube, etc. However, to say that Nielsen just lost track of viewers who are dropping cable, etc., and that's why TV and WWE's numbers are dropping, thus Nielsen is flawed and irrelevant, is just uninformed and incorrect.

Hell most of the posts on this past page about Nielsen are wrong based on uninformed speculation about what and how Nielsen works. See no further than: Nielsen data is missing = Nielsen numbers are suspicious = Nielsen is fatally flawed, no longer relevant, and shouldn't be trusted. Of course data is missing, you have to be a paying customer to get access to it.

According to netflix Neilsons claims are bullshit and raw frequently is the chart topper in the "social content views" and twitter engagement analytics. So which numbers are good? The tv rating, which is bad, or the social media, which is good?

Also neilson data is public you dont have to pay to get it. You pay to have the study done.

And if you really think neilson isnt going anywhere you arent paying attention. At all. Thats a powerfully uninformed srance ya got there.