Constant Recap Videos in WWE

By Scott Keith on May 8, 2014

hi scott,

everyone's favourite_loser here, and a comment i just made in the BoD update about how raw recaps stuff 5 times over got me thinking: do you think that wwe should treat every segment of their shows as if *that segment* is the 1st time ever that any given viewer is watching wwe?
we get endless recaps of stuff that happened 5 minutes ago, an hour ago, at the start of the show… plus the announcers (especially god-awful jbl) constantly rehash the same trivia about the wrestlers every single time (did you know: that rvd was the only man to hold both the wwe and the ecw titles at once? did you know: that curtis axel is the grandson of larry the axe hennig and son of wwe hall of famer mr. perfect curt hennig? did i know? at this point, do i care?!)

i can understand recapping the events of last week in the intro video package, and maybe select moments a couple of times throughout the show, but wwe has basically created a scenario where it doesn't matter where you start watching their tv shows (either in terms of in the general scheme of things week to week, or within the confines of a single episode), b/c they go overboard in recapping over and over and over again, to the point where recaps eat up what, 1/3 of a given segment?

wwe really does seem to have this mindset that the wwe universe really is the only universe in which its fans exist, and that you need to be made aware of your surroundings at all times… even if you were already there 5 minutes ago. i realize that maybe wwe is doing its best to make its product as accessible as possible so that anyone can pick up at any time and not be lost, but if they're so hell bent on keeping fans, why don't they create a scenario where 'you snooze, you lose,' and if you wanna see the big moments, well then you'd better catch them the 1st time around. voila, people have a reason to watch consistently from week to week instead of just skipping when they know there's another recap train arriving at the station in 5 minutes

I can see where they're coming from, as Marvel Comics for example is spectacularly adept at recapping storylines at the beginning of their issues, making it really easy for new readers to pick it up and go. I love that about them because if I hear good buzz on something it's easy to drop in and out as needed. Wrestling fans in the same way have been conditioned to be serial viewers, and it's long been a template for soap operas and comics that every issue/show is someone's first. And I will say that as annoying as it is in the moment, if I go back and watch something from the dead zone of 2006 for example it's very easy to catch up with the storylines due to the lowest-common-denominator recap videos they do so well. However, recapping something we literally just saw 5 minutes ago is kind of a drag. I think it's kind of a holdover from the "blink and you'll miss it" Attitude Era stuff where a lot of times you really would need a recap in case you were watching Nitro, and also for the announcers to make sense of whatever bullshit Vince Russo was writing.

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