WWE Network: The Downside
Live Stream Diversity
I love the 24/7 live stream. It's a brilliant concept that sets the WWE Network apart from Netflix, Hulu and every other over-the-top distributor of its kind. It's something we're going to be seeing later on in the positives column, but the one thing WWE needs to work on in this regard is the diversity of its content.
Currently every PPV that WWE, WCW and ECW has ever produced is available to watch. So why is it that I find the 24/7 live stream playing the same WrestleMania, Royal Rumble or Survivor Series PPV every day; sometimes twice per day? I understand that there are certain shows they want to promote, and burning through a library before they get off the ground is something to avoid, but they own so much content that I should never have to turn off the 24/7 stream because I've already seen the PPV earlier in the same day.
Let's compromise. Edit the "Recommended" playlist to show whatever WrestleMania, Raw Replay or NXT special you want to promote that week. All those things can be accessed on-demand, so there's no reason to be constantly replaying them live. Mix up the 24/7 stream to include more WCW and ECW, or even older WWE shows, and during the short commercial breaks, advertise for those big shows. Everyone wins.
Organization:
There's so much content on the WWE Network that it almost feels as if I could watch wrestling forever, and not get to the end. In the future, with more programming added, that may actually be true. But occasionally some of that content isn't easy to find.
The Network sports a great search feature, and we'll get to that later. But let's say you click on "SHOWS" – by default it takes you to the "PAY-PER-VIEWS" section, and displays "ALL" with a large list of content sorted between WWE, WCW and ECW. However, the "ALL" category can be deceiving, because it simply doesn't show everything there is to see. It did on launch, but I have a feeling they changed that to make load times more manageable. Instead, it shows a few PPVs from each year. For me, the latest 2013 TLC PPV isn't even shown.
This isn't a huge deal – you can simple sort them by year and everything will show up – but it is a misstep that had me confused at first. If you bring up "Raw Replays" you can see that every show through the start of 2013 is included. But unless you actually sorted them by year, there's no way of knowing that all of 2012 is also available, as are a handful of classic episodes offered on the 24/7 live stream.
There's also something called "EPISODE 266" in the "ORIGINALS" column that isn't properly titled, and doesn't fall under any of the categories. I assume it's some sort of Raw Recap show, by clicking on it, but I'm still not 100% sure of what I'm watching. Even the category "IN RING" seems a bit ambiguous.
These are minor inconveniences, but they still need to be sorted out to make the experience more efficient for everyone. Also keep in mind that my experience with the WWE Network has been limited exclusively to the PC, so I really can't speak about the orginizational skills on any other platform.
