[JonInMiddleGA]

The discussion about Raw's format (and my apparent blissful ignorance of it) made me curious about something, so I'm gonna do a little exercise. I want to see what the WWE roster looks like in terms of "people I'd intentionally watch" and how they're distributed across the brands. This is kind of an on-going thing in talks about storylines, potential programs, etc. here at my house since my son has to correct me fairly frequently about who is where, etc.

I'm using Wiki for brand assignments & active status, I've found it to be as up to date as anywhere for that info generally speaking.

Raw: Wyatt, Ambrose, The Revival (when healthy), Balor, Miz, Joe, Rollins
maybe Cesaro. And I'd watch Cass/Enzo talk

Raw Cruisers: Gallagher (most watchable guy on their roster to me atm), Aries,Kendrick, maybe Neville, maybe Tozawa,

Raw Women: none off-hand

Smackdown: AJ, Cena (against a decent worker), Owens, Orton (against somebody decent), Shinsuke, Breeze for the comedy. Zayn against someone that can go. Maybe Dillinger just to see if he's gonna make it.

Smackdown Women: Becky, Charlotte

NXT: Roode, Itami, Gargano, Strong, Tomasso
NXT Women: Asuka (quite possibly the best I've ever seen in a U.S. ring), maybe Cross

Unassigned: Pete Dunne, Mark Andrews, Tyler Bate, maybe Trent Seven.

I may have missed someone here but this seems pretty complete.

So what did I learn here?
Counting some "half credit" here & there
Raw has 11 people I wanna see over three hours
S'down has about 8-9 over two hours
NXT has 6 over one hour

Putting all that on paper kind of makes my own viewing habits make sense. I watch more NXT than anything else, with more stuff like the CW & UK specials next, and then Raw/Smackdown are kind of there but generally watch recaps/highlights and some PPVs.

The ratios of what interests me on a per-hour basis is about the same for the two main brands at this point. And, as I suspected from the beginning, the brand split manages to effectively weaken both brands enough that I'll pass over them both rather than creating two shows that I want to engage with regularly.