Where Did The Surprise Factor Go?

Night of Champions has come and gone.  It was a good pay per view.  The last match with Triple H and CM Punk had a lot of surprises like R-Truth and Miz running in and attacking Triple H, CM Punk, and the ref; John Laurinaitis running down with a new ref only to hold him back until CM Punk was on top of Triple H; and Kevin Nash runs in through the crowd to the ring and fighting both CM Punk and Triple H.  These were great moments and it left the audience with more questions than answers, but if people remember back to the Attitude Era, WCW/NWO Invasion, and the Monday Night Wars, these tactics were a staple to RAW and Nitro.  Every week, there was always some kind of surprise on each of these show, which made these shows awesome to watch.  Why did it change?  Why is it only on PPV that we get these “surprise factors”?

Reason 1 – There’s no more competition to WWE programming.  This isn’t a new assessment.  Many people attribute the blandness of WWE programming because there is no one alternative to their shows.  During the Monday Night Wars, WCW always pushed the envelope, which made the WWE step up in creating shock and awe in their shows.  Since there’s no challenging market to draw viewers away to alternatives, the WWE can show whatever they want and we as the audience just have to accept it.

Reason 2 – When everything is a surprise, then nothing is a surprise.  Even magicians, after using all the tricks up their sleeve, have a difficult time coming with new stunts.  If they do everything over and over again, then the audience will eventually be turned off.  To keep the audience off guard, certain big tricks are seldom used so that when they are used, it still excites people.  Same with WWE programming.  They have to pick-and-choose when to spring the surprise factor.

Reason 3 – Why give it away for free, when you can sell it?  The WWE is a business.  As a business, they have to save the big stunts for their pay-per-views.  This is another reason why major feuds are in a suspended animation until the pay-per-view.  So many skits promos are shown in order to hype feud.  The negative of all this is that the fans get tried of seeing the same hype-work show after show that sometimes, we get tired of waiting.  Now, when the feud culminates at the pay-per-view, we don’t care to it done over and over again.  This is why the surprise factor is launched at the pay per view so that we watch resolve of the conflict on Raw or Smackdown.

Reason 4 – Too pay per views to hype.  During the Monday Night Wars, the WWE had an average of 4 pay per views per year.  This allowed for a lot more run-ins and back-and-forth turns during Raw and Smackdown.  They constantly sprung the surprise factor throughout the episodes, which leads the feud to culminate at the pay per view.  Now with too many pay per views, Raw and Smackdown gets more watered down to mediocre storylines and we lose the surprise factor.

There is no 100% proven formula on what to keep ratings strong.  If there were, no TV shows would be cancelled, and the viewers would be watching the same thing over and over again.  As a wrestling fan, it would be great to be pleasantly surprised on Raw and Smackdown every week, but that’s not necessarily the case.  The Triple H and CM Punk match at Night of Champions showed that the WWE is aware of how to spring a new surprise on the audience.  Now, how to do it just enough to continue to grab more viewers is still the question.  Hopefully, there’s more intriguing storylines yet to come.  I’m eager to see where they go from here.