Quarter hour breakdowns would be ideal, but I can't really find much either.

I was being kind of lazy but JimHalpert is basically explaining why I believe what I do. Vince wants to maximize shareholder value (PPV money) so with Batista he gets additional casual fans and by giving DB TV time he keeps the hardcores somewhat happy.

Again, how is PPV money being measured in this case? Certainly not traditionally. And what evidence is there of Batista popping buyrates?

You would think that to do that you use more TV time on him to hype the show, but I'm not sure how many instances I've seen since his return where Batista appears in more than one segment of the show.

Hard to say how they will analyze it in the future but in Vince's mind from SummerSlam

DB + Main Event != $$$

I mean, you guys watch the content right. They turned DB heel and then back 2 weeks later. They would not do this if the plan was for him to be champ at WM. How would that have worked? He was going to be fighting Sheamus again if CM Punk didn't leave. And now suddenly he's going to be doing double duty at WM, going over HHH and then over Orton/Batista to be champ over the movie star? Come on. This is/was not ever a slow burn.

So you're under the impression that Vince thinks that WWE Network buys are going to be higher with Batista in the main event without Bryan there than if Bryan is in there? I don't know how you make sense of that. And is there ratings evidence to support that view since Batista's debut segment, which is also before the live crowd turned on him and thus isn't necessarily a great reflection of the current situation that they've felt a need to change some of the booking to respond to?

Again, all I'm really taking exception to is the notion that it's somehow a settled issue, and that you can see this clearly but that the rest of us are blinded by beard goggles. If they don't point us toward Bryan potentially getting in within the next two Raws then I would agree that it's almost certainly not happening.

Also the spike in the ratings on the Raw that Batista returned was the week after this happened:



So it's very possible people were tuning in because of that and not Batista.

Ratings went way down after the opening segment that Batista was in

That's pretty common right? Don't the ratings usually go down after the first segment then come back up for the last segment?

Intuitively this is what I would assume too given the three-hour shows. Unfortunately I just can't find any current data. PWTorch seems to be a site that gets them, but they haven't posted any this week that I can find.

http://whatculture.com/wwe/wwe-news-...-10-months.php

http://pwtorch.com/artman2/publish/W...l#.UxLEd_ldVqg

This doesn't have as much value as quarterly segments, but

That snapshot would tend to indicate that the direction WWE took at the Rumble wasn't positive for its TV ratings. If the original pop that Batista's return got was meaningful, you would think it wouldn't then start a ratings slide for the show as a whole after he wins the Rumble. I'm just very dubious that there's much indication from a business standpoint that Batista is actually helping them right now.

It looks like both of these links just refer to hourly breakdowns, and Daniel Bryan was in the first hour of that episode (and not in either of the next two hours) also. I'm assuming he was first hour at least, since he was in the third segment and that Batista return wasn't terribly long. Show was about Cena-Orton that night during the next two hours, just from a quick scan of the results.

You can believe what you want...I was hoping for the best until RR.

Root for DB at your own peril. It's not happening.

Thank you for bringing your enlightened reality to the thread. You answered my questions admirably.

You can bring a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. I like this forum and its members including you LKJ.

In this case the horse knew how to talk and asked you how to go about drinking the water, and instead of answering him you shrugged at him; I'd say the analogy fails, but perhaps that's just me.

Up for a friendly icon bet over whether or not DB is champ at the end of WM XXX?

The key is to pull down on the reigns so the horse's head is close to the water. It's possible the horse doesn't realise the water is there.

No. I haven't at any point said that he was likely to leave as champ. I said that your bold (and enlightened of course, very enlightened) declaration of it as a 0% probability was silly. I then asked questions that were problematic to your position that you have mostly shrugged at without really disposing of them with a satisfactory answer. I don't really know what odds I would put on him leaving as champ. Surely not good enough to avatar bet with someone who doesn't post that much when I post an excessive amount, but still well above zero.

Daniel Bryan is 100% to leave with the belt at WM. Maybe 110% even.

When everything is subject to the whims of a roided up 68 year old man who sometimes goes for days without sleep, nothing is 100%.

Spoiler:

Not sure how credible this is but I've seen this topic pop up a few times this morning on wrestling forums.

can we not do spoilers in a spoiler thread?

that's a good point but i figure lots of people venture in here not expecting actual spoilers...not that what I posted really is.

Wonder how they would even go about finding a spot in the main event for him. At least with Bryan it would make easy kayfabe sense. Punk hasn't been anywhere near the belt or any title matches or anything in forever.