Everything that scientists believe today is completely different from everything scientists believed 200 years?

TV ratings should not make any difference at all to the fans. If you like the show, watch it. If you don't, watch something else.

Ratings are something VINCE has to worry about, and adjust his product when they fall, not something that matters to US. What I find hypocritical of WWE fans are their views on ratings. They laugh and sneer at other promotions (especially TNA) about their ratings not being on par with the WWE and use that to "prove" that the WWE is "better".

Yet when WWE TV ratings fall those same fans will try to list a million grasping-at-straws reasons why things "are not as bad as they seem" and they try to qualify why WWE ratings are down ("they're down NOW because...*insert grasping-at-straws reason here*) as though the WWE is counted differently from every other TV show, and problems they have don't affect the quality of their shows, and thus the amounts of people who watch them. The ratings are counted by, and "calculated" by, the Nielsen Ratings company through their little "boxes" connected to a small portion of homes throughout the country. Programs recorded on Tivos, DVRs, VCRs, and other recording devices count the same as those that go straight to TVs without passing through recording devices.

As far as Nielsen is concerned a program is counted as "watched" whether you watched it when it aired or recorded it to watch later, all that matters is that your antenna or cable/satellite receiver tuned in to that program (and they do count "segments" of a program in their calculations, i.e. The first hour of a program got a 6.4 rating, the second hour only got a 5.7 because some homes changed the channel, with the final 15 minutes falling to 4.4 because even more homes changed the channel). "Everybody" has a TV recording device these days and Nielsen factors that into their calculations.

The WWE's ratings have fallen since the Attitude Era simply because they have less and less viewers as time passes. Why that is, is a subject for another discussion, but the bottom line is TV ratings do NOT equal "quality", only what Nielsen calculates is the number of homes that tuned in to a particular program. The falling WWE ratings can't be blamed on DVRs, Tivos, or VCRs because Nielsen factors them into their calculations.

WQ: Disagree. Triple H may be the boss at the moment but he'll be back in the ring sometime or other. Pro wrestlers never truly retire from the ring.

EDIT: Reading the answers above is something of an eye-opener. I'm actually very surprised that today's young people believe recording TV programs for later viewing was only made possible by the invention of the DVR/Tivo. Nothing could be further from the truth.

VCR made that possible and VCR has been available since the 1970's. Prior to the invention of DVR, VCR's were in just about every home and we used them just like people today use their DVR's, to record TV shows for later viewing (and to watch VHS tapes of movies, like we do DVD today). During the Monday Night War both WCW and the WWF were able to pull in those amazing ratings because the fans, who didn't just switch back and forth between shows, would record one show while they were watching the other; meaning, to Nielsen, those particular homes watched both programs at the same time.

I'm from England so I don't understand the 4.5 rating but if it's done in relation to viewers for other TV Shows then you have to take into account that they will also (a lot of them at least) have things like youtube reducing their viewers. If anything, the effect could be the opposite because whereas with a lot of its competitors it will make no difference watching on youtube (a lot will be repeats), with Raw it's live and it'll have a lot of people wanting to watch it live because it just seems better that way. Either way, far too much has changed for them to be directly compared and say "yes it was more popular back then", you're definitely right there.

If you think about how the WWE themselves look at TV ratings then you're definitely right that they're looked at differently, remember that with the direction the company has been taking since 07, there are a lot more sales of toys etc, I think that if WWE went TV-14 again and lost the deal with Mattel they would get more viewers but less money, so ratings are now not as important as they once were anyway. Edit: forgot the WQ. I think he will have one more match because I can't see him retiring without everybody knowing that his last match was his last match before it happened, it could end up being career vs streak at WM 28 against the undertaker as he said he's waiting for him but got I hope not, hopefully he'll have a match at Summerslam or Survivor Series where everybody knows it's his last ever match.

If he doesn't face Taker at Wrestlemania then I don't know, maybe Rock vs Cena won't be for the WWE title and he'll be in the title match to retire (from in-ring competition) the champ like Edge did. Or of course he could be injured or may have just decided to stop wrestling, I simply don't know but I'm about 80% sure that he'll have at least one more match. After that, yeah, I think he's done (one more fued at the most, which could even be against Punk, who knows) @The Dragon, a LOT of people watch WWE shows on youtube, those views don't count in the ratings.

Also, you seem to have misplaced a rant at those WWE fans who claim that ratings make TNA worse than WWE, the fact is quality and ratings, whilst there isn't perfect correlation, DO have a correlation, you cannot deny that (although I certainly am not saying that WWE is better than TNA just because it has more viewers, more that when a show loses viewers it can often be put down to a drop in quality, and the opposite being true when ratings rise) So the asker has a legitimate reason for taking notice of the ratings IMO.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.