Who Really Cares? wrote: Still can't stand watching a full show now days. Ill watch the Punk stuff on youtube but the product is way too poor to have a 3 hour slot.
I've been a fan for 21 years, and never thought I'd fall more than a week behind. Yet apart from two shows I've sought out in an attempt to begin my catch-up, I haven't watched since August.
Not because it's bad - hell, I've survived years of a product much more banal than we have right now. It's purely because a three-hour Raw every week is a ridiculous imposition. Add on top of that a two-hour SmackDown each week, and a three-hour pay-per-view every fourth week, and WWE alone will just exhaust whatever free time you have. Good luck if you happen to enjoy a supplementary source of wrestling too, like TNA for me (which I haven't watched since
last January, again because of time constraints as opposed to the show's quality).
It would be easy for someone to say "well if you were still a fan, you'd make the time," which to an extent is true, but the addition of a third hour to Raw really made me start to resent the demands that WWE's oversaturation places on viewers. I do want to get back into it, by catching up on the PPVs that I've missed, especially now that we're heading into WrestleMania season. But as someone who ran a wrestling forum for ten years and who's done everything from e-feds to various roles in local indy shows, it's a challenge I never thought I'd have to face.
I don't even blame WWE for it, because it wasn't their idea to extend Raw. That was a request they reluctantly undertook from USA Network, who just wanted to milk the show's ratings for an extra hour, despite the strains that WWE knew it would place on its creative resources and most likely its audience too. If anything, I believe I heard that Vince McMahon has long wanted to reduce the show to 90 minutes, but TV bosses have always been against it.