Too Many "B shows?"

Despite just adding an extra hour of Raw just a few months ago, the WWE has added two new shows to their TV schedule recently, Saturday Morning Slam and Main Event, which debuted this past Wednesday on the Ion channel. The debut show featured a champion vs. champion match, which was obviously booked to get people to tune into the premiere of the show, but within a few weeks you will probably see a cast of mid carders that don't get TV time on Raw. So, what's the problem with that this? Underutilized talent getting the chance to showcase their skills on TV is usually a good thing, but when you consider the overall landscape of the WWE, another hour of WWE programming is completely unnecessary.

This experiment of a mid week, one hour show was tried before and it made air for two years before being demoted to WWE.com, "WWE Superstars." The show debuted on the WGN network in April of 2009 and was moved to WWE.com in 2011 after not doing much to elevate the talent that was featured on the show. Similar to Main Event, when "Superstars" debuted, it featured some top talent, including The Undertaker, but it seems to be a matter of time before  the top talent that were featured this week, CM Punk and Sheamus, won't wrestle on Main Event, while being replaced with Drew McIntyre and Brodus Clay. The point being, Main Event will eventually become a pointless show with a few mid card matches that do nothing to actually establish the talent or advance storylines. The argument could be made that another show gives more talent the chance to wrestle on TV, but why not add those competitors to Raw? The three hour show has been rather lackluster, mostly because of the amount of video packages and pointless promos that have been used to take up the extra time so why exactly does the WWE need another hour of TV? Don't get me wrong, the tag team tournament match that was featured was a good way to show case the tag division, but when there's a three hour show, why not put the match on Raw where more of an audience will watch it?

The Saturday Morning Slam show has it's own agenda and is something different than Raw or Smackdown, but what's exactly the point of Main Event? The bottom line here is that WWE just has too much TV time on their schedule and in some ways they could be shooting themselves in the foot if there are too many shows on WWE TV. Just on TV, the WWE has nearly 7 hours of programming a week and that is while the ratings have dipped because of Monday Night Football. There's also a few shows that are Internet exclusive shows on WWE.com so how many people are really going to watch B-level shows when there are low ratings for Raw? It's great to see Zack Ryder, Justin Gabriel, and Santino to get some TV time, but it makes more sense for them to be seen on Raw because Raw has an extra hour and more of an audience than the Main Event show.