I had what I thought was a good observation: The amount of television time given to the WWE Raw women’s roster had seemingly declined since the post-SummerSlam era under Triple H. More specifically, that allotted TV time declined after New Year’s Eve, through to WrestleMania, when compared to the SummerSlam-NYE timeframe.
That led me to think that if we compare the total minutes given to the Raw women’s roster after New Year’s Eve leading to WrestleMania with the five months prior, as well as their slotting on the card, we’ll notice a shift away from programming for the women’s roster that coincides with the return of Vince McMahon to the WWE (early January). The dates may not line up exactly, given the amount of lying the company did about his involvement between August 2022 and April 2023, but a clear picture will hopefully emerge.
It got me to have an idea. Watching every single Raw is a bit much, but the decision was to time the women’s segments for each Raw from August 1st, 2022, until March 27th, 2023, and compare that to the overall length of the show (commercial time excepted). I would also be keeping track of slotting on the card, who is involved, and how long the segments were.
This is how we proceeded:
- Skip through each Monday Night Raw beginning with the first one post-SummerSlam on August 1st, 2022 and finishing with the go-home show before WrestleMania on March 27th, 2023.
- Make note of the length of the show, with commercials removed.
- Make note of the length of each women’s segment, promo or match.
- Make note of when the segment took place and who was included, primarily or otherwise.
- Excluded video packages hyping a match or person, unless it led directly to a confrontation that night. We did not include hype packages used to promote Pay-Per-Views. The focus is on the time given to the women to perform, not to a video editor sitting in a production truck. Backstage promos were included, of course.
- Mixed segments were also excluded, outside of one particular Rhea Ripley/Akira Tozawa match. That means some of the Ripley/Beth Phoenix stuff didn’t make it because they were flanked by Finn Balor and Edge (and Edge did most of the talking anyway).
- The Boxing Day episode was excluded as it was a highlight clip show.
So, we’re looking for how much of each show were women’s segments, be it a promo or match, who was involved, and where they were on the card. Clear as mud? Great.
This is where we have to dive more into the data than what each split represents because there are a number of ways of looking at this.
In short: no, the time given to the women was not cut under Vince McMahon, as they received 21.1% of the TV time under his regime compared to 20.7% under Triple H. That difference of 0.4% works out to be 27 minutes cut if that sustained itself for 52 weeks, or about 30 seconds a week. It’s basically the difference of two people cutting a promo and glaring a little longer at the camera. So, no real change on the total percentage of TV time for the women’s Raw roster under Vince McMahon.
That isn’t where the story ends, though, because there’s a pretty clear split under the McMahon regime. In his first six weeks after taking over, the women received 23.6% of the TV time, but that dropped under 19% in the six weeks leading to WrestleMania. That was the opposite for his son-in-law, as the Triple H era dedicated just 19.4% of the TV time to the women for his first 11 shows, but that rose to nearly 22% over the next 11 weeks.
Visually, here are the weekly percentages under Triple H:
And now here are the weekly percentages under Vince:
Both can be very inconsistent week-to-week, but a few notes:
- HHH was more consistent, as the women saw at least 25% of the screen time in 36.4% of the shows he ran. By comparison, the women saw at least 25% of the screen time in 25% of the shows ran by Vince McMahon.
- Becky Lynch is a massive influence. She was injured at SummerSlam and was out of action until late November. In the five shows prior to her return, the women took up just 16.8% of the available TV time. In the five shows after her return on November 25th, that number jumped to a huge 28.9%. That is the average of five shows, remember. Three of those five shows devoted at least 30% of screentime to the women’s roster, whereas none of the prior 17 shows devoted at least 30% of screentime to the women’s roster.
- The lowest four-week time share devoted to the women for each were 15.7% by HHH in October and 16.2% by McMahon leading to WrestleMania. Heading into their biggest show of the year, if it wasn’t someone involved in a ‘Mania match, it was Chelsea Green and [insert wrestler here]. Probably a good sign for Chelsea, not so much for [insert wrestler here].
Of course, there’s more than just screentime. It is how they’re featured and when.
After Vince’s return, there were eight separate segments of at least 10 minutes for one (or more) wrestler(s) from the women’s roster in his 12 shows: Becky Lynch (x3), Bianca Belair (x3), Rhea Ripley, and Bayley. It makes sense that the two biggest contemporary stars from the two biggest Raw women’s matches at WrestleMania would be more featured. It is worth noting Bayley’s longest featured segment happened right after Vince’s return, a match vs. Michin. And then she was the ancillary parts to the other stories.
That was a change from HHH. Lynch and Belair had extended segments immediately after SummerSlam when Becky announced her injury. After that, Damage CTRL was heavily featured (6/12 segments of 10+ minutes were theirs or Bayley’s over the course of nine shows), but Bliss (x2), Belair, Raquel Rodriguez, Candice LeRae, and Asuka all were featured at length at some point in that time. Hunter seemed to be relying on his veterans while looking for another person to push (makes sense).
Aside from those segments early in the Hunter Era, it was more of the same later. Damage CTRL, as a faction or individually, got lots of airtime, but so did Alexa, Asuka, Candice, and Rhea.
Lastly, there was a big difference in when they were featured. McMahon ran 12 shows leading to WrestleMania, which means 12 opening segments and 12 closing segments. Of those 24 segments, four were given to the women, and it was two for Belair and two for Lynch (and their opposition). That totals less than 17% of the opening or closing segments for the women.
In the 22 shows under HHH – 44 opening or closing segments – the women got 15 of them, or over one-third. Becky and Bianca got their fair share, of course, but Damage CTRL, Bliss, Ripley, Trish, and even Raquel Rodriguez and Aliyah had opening or closing segments. The return of Cody Rhodes alongside the white-hot status of the Bloodline meant a lot fewer prime slots for the women to start the calendar year. I should mention, though, that even after Survivor Series, when The Bloodline was running hotter than ever, one of Bliss or Lynch had one of those two segments four times in 10 opportunities. There was no Cody, but even with Sami Zayn and The Bloodline running over pro wrestling, the women were being featured to open or close the show frequently.
To this point, I didn’t find a decline from McMahon to HHH in women’s TV time as a percentage (it was a small rise, actually) but, again, that’s a bit deceiving. Lynch is clearly a huge star for them, so we need to look at all of it together. Here is the entire August 1st 2022 – March 27th 2023 run, as a percentage of TV time featuring the women, including a four-week rolling average in yellow, with some notations:
Lynch had a huge influence on HHH, McMahon tamped down things almost immediately, gave a boost to the division after Lita/Trish returned alongside Becky, but then things fell heading into ‘Mania. They focused on their main feuds and used the time elsewhere.
At the end of this, I am glad I dig into this. The overall change wasn’t there, but it’s clear there was a huge downswing after the Elimination Chamber and heading into WrestleMania. HHH kept time pretty consistent after Becky’s injury until she returned, which wasn’t as much as when she was healthy, obviously. She is clearly a huge part of the division and as she goes, so does everyone else. That is a needle-mover if I’ve ever seen one.
There was a downturn immediately after McMahon took over, even with Lynch healthy and on the roster. Cody Rhodes didn’t return until Royal Rumble on January 28th, and the weeks immediately after McMahon’s return saw a huge drop: 29.4% for the women from December 5th through January 2nd to 18.6% in the three weeks with Vince reinstated leading to the Rumble, which means no Cody to eat into TV time. That was all given to The Bloodline, Brock Lesnar, or elsewhere.
The bump came later with Trish/Lita, but it was short-lived. Now, ‘Mania season is different from the others, so I’d recommend someone else pay attention to this so I don’t have to do the next three months at some point, but 16.2% of the TV time in the month heading into WrestleMania is not very much. Aside from that Trish/Lita bump, it was largely a three-month downturn for the women under McMahon, both in timeshare and featured slotting. It will be interesting to see the changes (if any) made post-WrestleMania when they’re not tied up in feuds.
Cliffy's hell-hole 