Jeff Jarrett sees WWE’s recent championship changes on weekly television as a sign of where the company wants its biggest moments. He thinks the push to make Raw and SmackDown essential viewing reflects the value of those shows in WWE’s current business, though he said he does not know the company’s specific booking reasons.
Conrad Thompson raised the subject on My World With Jeff Jarrett after Sami Zayn beat CM Punk for the Undisputed WWE Championship on the September 11 SmackDown from Mexico City. Thompson told Jarrett that WWE had changed that championship four times on weekly television since January, a tally Jarrett said he had not realized until they discussed it.
When you just said the fourth time on free TV, on episodic TV, weekly TV, I didn’t realize it was four. You said in the last 12 months or this year?
Thompson clarified that he meant since January and excluded premium live events from his count. Jarrett then compared today’s television strategy with the older pay-per-view model, where a promoter would traditionally save the highest stakes for the show fans had to buy separately.
It is definitely the sign of the times because, from a creative arc, the traditional mentality is we’ve got to create the most revenue, and those matches that create the most revenue have to have the highest stakes. We want people to get their money’s worth when they invest in a pay-per-view in days gone by. Now it appears that they want to get their Netflix weekly episodic, SmackDown weekly episodic, they want to get those ratings, must-see TV, because that’s where the revenue is at.
Jarrett stopped short of claiming inside knowledge of WWE’s plans. He said individual switches could be affected by circumstances the audience never hears about, but he viewed the larger pattern as a deliberate attempt to make the weekly programs matter more.
We both know we’re not in the room how the sausage is made and the reasons. There could be an injury, there could be a guy needs time off, there could be a death in the family. There’s so many reasons that we will never know on why they made this decision week in and week out. But when you string together four in less than nine months, that certainly is a screaming loud message that they are doing everything in their power. I don’t want to say hot shot, but we’ve seen hot shot in year 2000, and we’ve seen hot shot in Memphis territory many times. You’ve seen hot shots throughout professional wrestling. But four times in nine months on weekly episodic TV, because cable’s not free, that’s the reality that they are trying to make those shows must-see TV. They got the money, the hay is in the barn, whether it’s ESPN, whether it’s whatever it is, the premium live events, the Saturday Night’s Main Event that they get paid extra for. That money’s in. They’re not worried about ratings. They’re trying to work toward their renewal. That’s my first real stream of consciousness, that four times in nine months, Conrad, they’re trying to make that must-see TV.
Zayn’s Mexico City title win and the interference that helped decide it were detailed in WrestlingHeadlines.com’s SmackDown report. Jarrett’s comments address the broader television strategy he believes the title changes suggest, not a claim that he knows why WWE booked any particular finish.
Source: My World With Jeff Jarrett, “WWE changing the title again on live TV is a sign”.
