2017 Weekly TV Show of the Year

[Mike]

Start up the 2017 subforum with it being almost September (!) in a couple weeks.

What's the best weekly TV show?

Impact and ROH are both good, sometimes very good, but rarely talked about. Smackdown may win it this year. Talking Smack will get a lot of votes but I wonder if it'll be out of sight, out of mind by December.

I don't see RAW winning, but I see it coming in better than ninth. It is probably fourth best of the five new content WWE TV shows.

NXT and 205 Live are hot for a bit then cool off for weeks in terms of buzz, but I can see NXT winning again just because of the rep it has had in recent years. And that's not to say it isn't good either. It is. But the best of the year? Maybe.

I can't see Lucha Underground doing better than any of the six listed already. The change of buzz that show has had in two years is really sad.

Last year--

• BEST WEEKLY TV SHOW
  
  1. NEW JAPAN WORLD PRO WRESTLING (198) 2,070
  2. WWE Smackdown Live (200) 1,626
  3. WWE Talking Smack (165) 1,191
  4. CMLL Friday Night (79) 1,137
  5. Ring of Honor (57) 1,023
  6. WWE NXT (68) 898
  7. Lucha Underground (52) 813
  8. TNA Impact 101
  9. WWE Raw (6) 60

[armsofsleep]

I think it has to be NXT.

Ring of Honor is still a mess when it comes to airing schedule, and while it often has the best matches of the year for ROH, it still has issues creating compelling storylines or characters, especially with the boatloads of roster turnover this year.

GFW has been too up and down, with a lot of terrible episodes to match the current batch of solid ones. Plus the uncertainty regarding Del Rio and everything else is enough to keep it off my ballot.

205 Live is a string of ***1/2+ matches in front of silent crowds that makes it impossible to care about them most of the time. I guess it makes sense that they are using Gulak, TJP, Nese, and the like, because it''s very similar to EVOLVE.

Raw and Smackdown have both had high highs, and very low lows. Neither one was as consistent as Smackdown Live was last year.

Meanwhile, post-Mania, NXT is better than it has ever been. There are definite issues with crowd reactions (which has been discussed here and elsewhere a lot) but they have a loaded roster, the feuds mostly make sense, and they have a lot of high end matches that every other TV show will lack. Stuff like Dunne/Burch and Lorcan/McIntyre simply won't be touched by any other TV show consistently.

Also I'm not counting the Turner Classic Movies retrospectives of NJPW matches from 9 months ago extravaganza.

CWF has been great and will make my ballot, even if some angles (Dawsons winning the tag belts, the Nick Richards deal) didn't really land for me.

The real sadness is that WWE UK should exist and be number one.

[thecubsfan]

NJPW is going to win by default until NJPW stops being this NJPW. It's a Bryan Danielson level of certainty. Any criticism of the show that can be lobbied this year could've been lobbied last year (with the exception of the live special issues), and the product appears to be even more popular. And, if the numbers the WON has are accurate, the NJPW most people are watching is the AXS show.

I think it's up for grabs for #2, with SmackDown being ahead because of early in the year but not so far ahead that a hot few months of RAW or NXT or even 205 could surpass it.

I think Talking Smack is really going to be hurt by being out of mind that long - if the polling was in July, it'd be at least top 3 as much about being a protest vote as people actually voting for it. That sort of thing could cause LU to do better than expected - if this suddenly becomes the last chance to vote for LU on a ballot, it may pick up some 2s & 3s.

The Friday CMLL show has generally not been as good this year, but I kind of believe it's as much a protest vote as anything - "I don't want to vote for another WWE thing so I'll throw in the thing I've watched a couple times and Dave always speaks highly of." There's a chance for some other show to capture that vote, but nothing really seems to have captured everyone's attention in the same way.

[rovert]

Raw has been better than anyone will give it credit for.

ROH TV keeps slipping.

People talk up occasional IMPACT and 205 Lives then I watch them and they hit the exact same ceiling each time.

[Joe Lanza]

It's still unclear if dave combined the NJPW votes from Japan with the AXSTV votes last year, but I suspect he did. I feel like they should be counted separately, but the problem is I doubt ballots specify.

I've personally enjoyed NXT more than any other show this year. If I'm voting today, it's NXT.

Impact was soooooo dry pre-JJ, and an easy, average watch now. Can't see voting for it.

205 Live probably deserves a Top 3 vote on match quality, but that show has so many issues that I rarely can say I enjoy it.

I hate this category because I never have three shows that I really like enough to feel good voting for.

[ceftaxias]

Main Event, 205 Live and NXT in some order for me, they offer the best ratio of good content vs. bad content. Raw has absolutely been an underrated match quality show, there's good stuff almost every week and under the radar TV matches in general are why I can't get behind this as the worst WWE year of the decade, I think there's been more great TV matches than PPV. But I could never vote for Raw or SmackDown in this state, the combined five hours leads to an enormous amount of awful television.

I miss Lucha Libre Elite

[DylanZero]

For all its faults, CMLL is the show I often enjoy most and there are some legitimately great moments and matches this year (the finals of the Gran Alternativa/Copa Junior, the Best of 2016 redux show, Gran Prix, etc.) there's a handful of dry and pointless, boring shows but I would be surprised if there aren't just as many as I feel that way about than NXT which is pretty much my #2 by default.

Raw is better than SD unquestionably and I do not mind GFW for the most part. LU is the most schizophrenic show because it can be awesome one week and make me embarrassed to be a fan the next but for the most part I think the season has been above average. It just comes across as such a lame duck show and the break in episodes was just horrible buzzwise. I may vote it my #3 for the reason Cubs said. It definitely won't be SD though.

[armsofsleep]

Love the CMLL shout. The Weekly TV Show always feels pretty open, all it would take is CMLL to not shoot themselves in the dick repeatedly to get a surefire spot on the actual awards.

[Goat]

Battlemen News is a recap show with interviews on Samurai TV that I like watching even though I don't understand Japanese.

[themib]

Surely wXw Shotgun has to count. I know it's on wXw's streaming service, but I do watch it on my TV, and if NXT counts, so should this. Tremendous story building, the matches aren't always the biggest ones, but there are a few gems in there, but it's logical and promotes the big shows extremely well.

[cbacon87]

For what it's worth, I think NXT's been better this year than last, overall. Better direction, better main event matches, certainly recently and most of all, they seem to have gotten over the stretches where the TV feels utterly aimless between Takeovers.

[mlev76]

NXT has been on point and easily the best weekly show since Mania. It feels fresher and more important than it has since late 2015.

[achillesforever6]

NXT has been on point and easily the best weekly show since Mania. It feels fresher and more important than it has since late 2015.

Yeah the way they revamped the presentation after Mania really breathed life into the program, the only marks against it have been the crowd's apathy

[syxxpakk]

NXT undoubtedly.

[cheapshot]

My weekly favourites are wXw Shotgun TV, NXT & CWF-Mid Atlantic.

All are "online" for most people, I hope Dave doesn't have some odd rule.