Michael "Canyda" Jenkinson

Putting The Heat On The Monday Night Wars

Don’t look now, but the WWF has just set the stage for the end of the “Monday Night Wars.” They did so with the news this week that Sunday Night Heat will be soon be live every second week and may eventually become a two-hour program.

Of course, that by itself doesn’t mean Raw will be cancelled or cut back or diluted into a secondary show. But let’s look at the reality of today’s wrestling world.

One of these days the brain trusts in Titan and Turner are going to realize that it is pay-per-view which pays the bills, not Monday night ratings.

The obsession with Monday night ratings has been a great thing for wrestling fans. We've been treated to PPV quality matches for free as WCW and the WWF try to one-up each other for the sake of Tuesday afternoon backslapping.

But the ratings really mean diddly over squat. The ad revenue they bring in pales in comparison with the bucketfuls of money the federations make off pay-per-view.

Don’t get me wrong: TV ratings are one measure of a federation’s popularity - which angles work, which don’t, which wrestlers turn viewers on and off, and so on. But ratings by themselves don’t add a whole lot to the piggy-bank unless the shows are designed not to grab a rating for the sake of a rating, but grab a rating to get you to buy this Sunday's biggest PPV wrestling event of all time.

In that light, the WWF has far more to gain in the long run by running its main show unopposed on Sunday nights, and setting up their main angles and storylines there.

Without the pressure to outdo WCW on the same night, they will, undoubtedly, not give us PPV-quality matches, but they could actually increase their PPV buyrates by educating fans that the payoff for the angles always and only comes on the $29.95 shows, not the free Monday night shows.

Especially if they are smart and use Heat once a month as a prologue to the monthly pay-per-view broadcast.

Now you could turn around and say to me that WCW put Thunder on Thursdays long before the WWF conceived of Sunday Night Heat. And you could argue - correctly - that no one looked at Thunder as being WCW’s “out” from the Monday Night Wars.

I don't think the two situations are comparable. At present, WCW has three shows: Nitro on Monday. Thunder on Thursday and Saturday Night. (If you need me to tell you what night it’s on, you’re not paying nearly enough attention.)

By my count, that’s seven hours of WCW programming a week. (Which is about six too many for my tastes.) But it is fairly well spaced out over the course of the week. And WCW is owned by a company which can throw as much money into it as it wants.

The WWF, on the other hand, has Shotgun Saturday Night, Sunday Night Heat and Monday Night Raw. I think that’s only four hours of TV (because we don’t get Heat or Shotgun in Canada and it's my understanding that Shotgun is just an hour) but it’s four hours on three consecutive nights. It could become five hours on three consecutive nights. With the added expenses of doing two live shows every second week instead of just one. (Even WCW has learned to tape every second Thunder.)

If Heat goes to two hours, unopposed, live-every-second week, then is it not in the WWF’s best interest, both financially and from a fan base point of view, to turn Heat into its flagship show?

Why go to all the extra expense of upgrading Heat into something that doesn’t look like a secondary show if it will continue to be one? Why set up angles on Raw (which may or may not be seen or have any lasting impact because of what’s on Nitro at the same time) when they could be done on Heat for potentially a much larger audience?

True, Heat doesn’t get Raw-like ratings. But it could. When Raw started out unopposed as a one-hour show on Mondays it got less than half the ratings it does now, and drew less viewers than Heat already attracts after just a couple of months on the air. In fact, I don't think Raw was the WWF's flagship show when it went on the air. Superstars still held that title.

Here’s where Thunder and the usefulness of ratings actually comes into play in favor of my argument: I have to think that Titan is looking at Thunder and thinking WCW is blowing a huge opportunity to grab killer ratings to promote their money-making pay-per-views by running such a dull, obviously secondary program on a night that - in the wrestling world at least - they have all to themselves. And the WWF execs are determined not to make that mistake with Heat.

Whether the end of the Monday Night Wars would be a good thing for wrestling fans is the question. It’s not a good thing if all wrestling fans want is great free TV. It is a good thing, however, if wrestling fans want the best possible product for the longest possible time.

Wrestling’s popularity moves in cycles. The current wave cannot and will not last forever. When the bubble bursts, both companies will have to retrench and cut extraneous expenses - which depending on the severity of the downturn could mean secondary television shows.

When the crunch comes, the WWF will have to decide whether it makes more sense to run its main television show by itself on a Sunday or getting in the trenches on a Monday. All for ratings which by themselves really don’t mean a whole lot to the bottom line but can add significantly if it translates into increased PPV buys.

If the end of the Monday Night Wars means less marquee matches on free TV in exchange for the survival of a vibrant, creative wrestling environment on the whole, then the WWF should call the truce now and gracefully exit from the battle.

Michael "Canyda" Jenkinson can't really think of anything witty to put here this week, so he's relying on your help. E-mail him at canyda@hotmail.com.

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