Originally Posted by
hombrelobo
Happy belated 4W
Storylines: The Death of PPV
October 5, 2010
It is no secret that pro-wrestling PPV buy rates are falling at an alarming rate. TNA’s buy rates on PPV are almost none existent and WWE’s, while doing considerably better than TNA’s, are nothing to brag about and are dropping also. Last I heard, bad TNA PPV’s were getting as low as 8000 buys and WWE buys have dipped as low as the 100,000 range domestically in recent months. There is a lot of discussion among industry insiders and analysts as to what is causing this drop and while everyone wants to point at, over exposure of the product, the economy, the same guys on top, inability to elevate new stars, along with a whole host of other reason I think the single biggest cause of the PPV decline is Storylines.
I’m not talking about bad Storylines or ineffective Storylines, I’m talking about the fact that this business no longer books Angles in order to sell matches on PPV, they write Storylines and then have matches on PPVs that are designed to further said Storyline. Now I realize that many people just view Storylines and Angles as different words describing the same thing but I think each term puts the creator in a different mind set and thus result in a different product. Let’s look at each case individually and you can tell me which should be more effective.
The way wrestling used to be promoted, Angles were booked on TV to create interest in a match that fans would then pay to see on PPV. The booker decided that (just as an example) Ricky Steamboat and Randy Savage for the IC Title will be a match at WrestleMania III. They then had to book an Angle that would put these two people on a path that would intersect at WrestleMania. This is key; an Angle is what’s created when two lines intersect, and that intersection point is the single most important point of the Angle. That point is a wrestling match and what you sell on PPV. They had Savage injure Steamboat and dominate the IC Title picture in Steamboats absence. Then Steamboat came back and vowed to not only win the title but get revenge for the beating he took at the hands of Savage months earlier. The WWF was not selling a Storyline here, they were selling a match, and the Angle was the means by which to make fans care about that match. The week before WrestleMania no one was thinking, “Where does the Savage - Steamboat Storyline go from here?
