On the latest After The Bell podcast, Corey Graves explained why WWE has been putting so much emphasis on the third hour of Monday Night Raw.
WWE has been doing big segments to start the third hour of the show. Graves discussed the reason behind this:
“I’m gonna pull back the curtain for you a little bit. We as WWE, as a publicly traded company, spend a ton of money on research, development, you’re following ratings, you’re watching viewing patterns, when people tune in, when people tune out, what they like to stay for, and what makes them stay longer. There’s a lot of research that goes into how we build these shows and how we lay them out.”
“I don’t think I’m giving away any trade secrets that I think around the 10 o’clock hour, you’ll notice it’s happened for the past several weeks, not just this past week, going all the way back to the countdown to Cody was coming on at about the 10 o’clock hour because that’s the meat of our viewership. That is when our viewership is the strongest. That is when people really look for the biggest bang possible. So we’ve been trying to deliver that rather than trying to string them along for that extra hour, for that third hour, to where the third hour, you’ll still see tons of it and Monday night was no exception. We ended with Theory and Ziggler with a three seg pay-per-view match-up. So you’re still gonna get that additional main event, but as far as attracting the largest amount of eyes possible, 10 o’clock right now seems to really be the sweet spot.”
“So you’re gonna see, I think, and to the best of my knowledge, some more high profile things going down in that 9:50 to 10:10 window going forward because that’s when the most eyes are on the product. Of course, you want to make sure that everybody hangs around. You want to give them something to say ‘Well, I’m not tuning out now’, but there’s a reason for all that and how it’s going down.”
Graves also spoke about changes made to Raw over the last month:
“Three hours, man, that’s a long time. A lot of weeks would go by where it felt like we were sort of in a holding pattern, for lack of a better term. This feels very much like hey, the machine is in motion. Try to keep up. That’s where I feel we’re at right now.”
“We are barreling toward Clash at the Castle. Karrion Kross shocked the world. He’s mixed up with the Drew McIntyre-Roman Reigns situation. There’s all sorts of uncertainty. There are surprises galore, new faces seeming to show up week after week. Hit Row returning Friday night on SmackDown. Shout out to AJ. We’ve had him here on the show. He’s a blast. Big money waiting to be made there. I just think everything about the pace, the feel, the vibe, it’s very different and refreshing. It just feels faster.”
“Everything about Monday Night Raw from my perspective, I no longer look at my phone and go, ‘Oh my God, we’re only halfway there.’ I look at my phone and go ‘Wow, it’s main event time or this is right around the corner.’ It makes it feel faster to me in that role, which I imagined to fans makes it a lot easier to digest and watch.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription