WWE HOFer Eric Bischoff Lambasts 3 Hour Weekly Shows

"WWE SmackDown" is set to return to a two-hour format, which has prompted Eric Bischoff to speak about how tough it is to produce a three-hour wrestling show every week.

Bischoff, who has experienced needing to adapt to the switch in show lengths during his time as executive director, feels that it is difficult to keep fans interested for the entire year in three-hour shows.

"It's so ridiculous, and it keeps happening. It happened to me first. I was the first one that was, you know, the victim of the network doing exactly what you just said, Conrad, [which] was, 'Hey, everything's already there. We got the talent there, and you know, incrementally, an extra hour doesn't really cost us any more money, and we can sell 25 more ads, so do it.' Because nobody understood — kind of what I was talking about before with executives and people in entertainment, that don't really quite understand the product or the audience with it — you just cannot keep 52 weeks a year the level of interest you need to sustain for 3 hours," he declared on "83 Weeks."

Bischoff feels that the audience eventually gets fatigued by the three-hour shows. He also explained how three-hour shows require a bigger roster and additional creative ideas for the show to be engaging for the fans.

"You're going to fatigue the audience, you're going to dilute the value of the character, you're going to dilute the impact of the storylines, all of the things that happen when you drag out that extra hour because it's brutal to fill," said the Hall of Famer. You've got to keep a tremendous amount
of extra talent on the roster just to fulfill the additional hour."

The former WWE and WCW executive feels that the addition of extra hours to pro wrestling television shows has been happening for a long time, noting how it's a vicious cycle that television executives often try to exploit.