Worth the money?

"The idea of giving your audience an incentive to watch is nothing new, nor is it pathetic. Obviously, it's the WWE's responsibility to ensure that they air a program that maintains that new and returning audience, or else they essentially wasted one million dollars a week." - Me, about 6 hours ago

I stand by my comment that it's ridiculous to criticize the Million Dollar Mania giveaway before it even happened, and I still insist that this ploy shouldn't be labeled as "pathetic" or "desperate." I also continue to stand by my point that this sweepstakes should not be interpreted as "we'll pay you to watch our show."

That being said, I do believe that WWE failed miserably on delivering a show that will encourage new and returning viewers to tune in each and every week. The matches were short and rather unspectacular. The two main events BOTH featured a cop-out ending. Explain to me how you manage to book matches that involve Snitsky and Cryme Time, and a skit with Charlie Haas (who hasn't appeared on WWE television in months) and Mae Young, but spectacular athletes like Chris Jericho, Shawn Michaels, Paul London, and Brian Kendrick don't have matches?

Understandably, the centerpiece of the show was the million dollar giveaway. However, it consumed far too much time, and came off as exceptionally awkward and, well, boring. It took Vince FOREVER to dial the numbers, and on more than one occasion he either incorrectly dialed, accidentally hung up on the contestant, or got a busy signal. He also mistakenly hung up on a ringing phone because it played music instead of actually ringing, and he redialed a number before the dial tone. I was left wondering if this man even knew how to use a telephone.

This is really, really bad. Not only are new and returning viewers going to be discouraged from tuning in next week, but your regular viewers may be turned off as well. The contest really hindered the overall flow of the program, and they made absolutely no effort into trying to incorporate it into the show's booking. JBL already made it clear he doesn't like that fans are receiving free money, and John Cena is the company's golden boy. Why not have JBL complain to Vince about this contest, prompting Vince to propose that if JBL wins, the next contestant gets $2, but if Cena wins, the contestant gets $200,000? It would certainly add a little heat to the match up, which we've seen several times over the past couple of months.

I most certainly appreciate the gesture of the giveaway (I mean, there are a lot of other ways to garner attention than giving money to your viewing audience), and I think it has the potential to be successful, but they absolutely should have fine tuned the logistics before going live.

I will say this in defense of the show, though: The Chris Jericho/Shawn Michaels storyline continues to deliver. Absolutely awesome segment.