Eric Bischoff Weighs In On Pros & Cons Of WWE Smackdown Returning To Three Hours

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff reacted to the report that WWE Smackdown will expand back to three hours in January as reported last week, and explained the ratings math behind why he isn’t enthusiastic about it. You can check out his comments below:

On the Obvious Motivation:

“The reason for going back to three hours is driven by dollars. You’re selling more inventory, and at a higher CPM than anything else you can do with that hour, since you’re there already. Because of economy of scale, it costs you almost nothing extra to have an extra hour you can sell. So of course you’ll do it from a financial point of view.”

On the Cost:

“That’s the good news. The other news is that you’re diluting your audience, because you lose audience generally. I haven’t looked at quarter hours or even hours in a long time, but based on the numbers I see, I’m extrapolating that you’re probably losing ground from the moment you open. You start losing ground before mid-show, and it continues until the very end.”

On How It Used to Work:

“The days of ending with a higher rating than you started out with — which is what we did at Nitro, and what WWE eventually, after we taught them how, did — you would end the night and your show would end 25 to 35% higher than it was when it started. Back when I was producing television for BHE Entertainment, an independent production company, if we produced a show that opened up with a three, our lead handed us a three, but we went down to a 2.5 — we already knew what the renewal possibility was for that series. That was like the kiss of death. Now it’s commonplace.”

On the Effect On the Overall Rating:

“I don’t know how much this really affects business, but you do take the total gross audience average and, instead of dividing it by two, now you’re dividing it by three. You generally have a pretty significant drop-off at the third hour. So it just dilutes your overall number. Part of that is optics and PR. Part of that is CPMs — what happens to the value of your spots when there’s more of them in the marketplace, but there aren’t necessarily more people that excited about advertising in wrestling? That’s the variable that we’ll find out.”

On Whether WWE Could Split It Into Two Shows For Ratings Purposes:

“Could it be done? It probably could be done by literally producing two separate shows, which would mean you would have to format it as its own separate show, not three hours disguised as two separate shows. I think Nielsen would still track it accordingly, and that’s what this is about — how does Nielsen track it? How do they report it? How does the combined number of two separate shows affect the CPM? I don’t know the answer to that. That’s the reason for the juggling game. But you’re right, that was the reason it was being done back then, because it needed to be done to maximize your hours.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.