The year is over and since the end of February, I started keeping track of the match lengths on the weekly television shows from the three major companies, Ring of Honor, World Wrestling Entertainment, and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling. For more than forty weeks, I have been providing a run down of the matches that aired on the six shows that air from these three companies.

While I planned to do a recap of the By the Numbers Columns, it would not have been a complete look at 2010. With this week’s Smackdown in the books, I have been able to review the episodes that aired in 2010 prior to the start of the column.

Based on the calendar, the year started and ended on a Friday so that means that we had fifty-three weeks of Friday Night Smackdown in 2010. This was not the only show that did not have fifty-two weeks of shows. Ring of Honor had a number of their shows pre-empted for alternate programming on HDNet and in the final week of the year, the network aired a ‘Best of’ Special. Total Nonstop Action Wrestling’s Impact was pre-empted for one week so there were only fifty-one episodes. WWE’s NXT did not start until the end of February so there were only forty-five episodes of the show from Syfy and WWE.com. The show it replaced on Syfy in February, ECW, aired for seven weeks.

There were two shows that had exactly fifty-two episodes in 2010, WWE Raw and WWE Superstars.

In addition to pre-emptions, there were a number of ‘special episodes’ during the year. TNA Impact started the year with a big three hour special to usher in the Hogan/Bischoff regime. They also held ‘The Whole F’n Show’ in August which included the matches that would have taken place at Hard Justice if Dixie Carter had not been thanked by Tommy Dreamer. During the second half of the year, TNA added its Reaction show after Impact. On a number of occasions the main event of Impact would run into Reaction. Because it was a separate show, whenever Impact would go more than a minute into Reaction, it was considered a three hour show for the purpose of the By the Numbers columns. This happened five times during the year. WWE Raw had a commercial free episode during the year so instead of the thirty-five to forty minutes of commercials on a typical two hour episode of Raw were gone. There were also five three hour Raw specials during the year.

Now it is time to look at the totals for 2010:

Some of the percentages below might not add up to one hundred percent based on the method by which the totals are rounded. Totals are taken to two decimal places. Times are based on a one, two, or three hour show and does not consider the commercials that air on a given show.

Total Number of Episodes by Show

WWE Smackdown: 53
WWE Raw: 52
WWE Superstars: 52
TNA Impact: 51
Ring of Honor: 47
WWE NXT: 45
WWE ECW: 7

Total Amount of Programming on All Seven Shows: 474 Hours

Total Hours of Wrestling by Show (and overall percentage)

WWE Raw: 109 (23 percent)
TNA Impact: 108 (22.78 percent)
WWE Smackdown: 106 (22.36 percent)
WWE Superstars: 52 (10.97 percent)
Ring of Honor: 47 (9.92 percent)
WWE NXT: 45 (9.49 percent)
WWE ECW: 7 (1.48 percent)

Total Amount of Wrestling on All Seven Shows: 7,137 Minutes (25.09 percent of total programming)

Total Wrestling by Show (percent of total)

WWE Smackdown: 1,515 Minutes (21.23 percent)
WWE Raw: 1,371 Minutes (19.21 percent)
TNA Impact: 1,339 Minutes (18.76 percent)
Ring of Honor: 1,256 Minutes (17.60 percent)
WWE Superstars: 1,055 Minutes (14.78 percent)
WWE NXT: 469 Minutes (6.57 percent)
WWE ECW: 132 Minutes (1.85 percent)

Total Number of Matches on All Seven Shows: 1,319 Matches

Total Number of Matches by Show (percent of total)

WWE Raw: 309 (23.43 percent)
TNA Impact: 279 (21.15 percent)
WWE Smackdown: 273 (20.70 percent)
WWE Superstars: 172 (13.04 percent)
Ring of Honor: 164 (12.43 percent)
WWE NXT: 104 (7.88 percent)
WWE ECW: 18 (1.36 percent)

Total Number of ‘One Minute Matches’ (any match that is less than 89 seconds in length): 109 (8.26 percent of all matches)

Total Number of One Minute Matches by Show (percentage of all one minute matches/percentage of all matches on show)

WWE Raw: 46 (42.20 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/14.89 percent of all Raw Matches)
WWE Smackdown: 24 (22.02 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/8.80 percent of all Smackdown Matches)
TNA Impact: 18 (16.51 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/6.45 percent of all Impact Matches)
Ring of Honor: 12 (11.01 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/7.32 percent of all Ring of Honor Matches)
WWE NXT: 5 (4.59 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/4.81 percent of all NXT Matches)
WWE Superstars: 3 (2.75 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/1.74 percent of all Superstars Matches)
WWE ECW: 1 (.91 percent of all 1 Minute Matches/5.56 percent of all ECW Matches)

Total Number of ‘Double Digit Matches’ (any match that is longer than 9 minutes 30 seconds): 170 (12.89 percent of all Matches)

Total Number of Double Digit Matches by Show (Percentage of all double digit matches/percentage of matches on show)

Ring of Honor: 53 (31.18 percent of all Double Digit Matches/32.32 percent of all Ring of Honor Matches)
WWE Smackdown: 43 (25.29 percent of all Double Digit Matches/15.75 percent of all Smackdown Matches)
WWE Raw: 27 (15.88 percent of all Double Digit Matches/8.74 percent of all Raw Matches)
TNA Impact: 23 (12.35 percent of all Double Digit Matches/7.53 percent of all Impact Matches)
WWE Superstars: 16 (9.41 percent of all Double Digit Matches/9.30 percent of all Superstars Matches)
WWE ECW: 5 (2.94 percent of all Double Digit Matches/27.78 percent of all ECW Matches)
WWE NXT: 5 (2.94 percent of all Double Digit Matches/4.81 percent of all NXT Matches)

Average Number of Matches per Week by Show

WWE Raw: 5.94
TNA Impact: 5.47
WWE Smackdown: 5.15
Ring of Honor: 3.49
WWE Superstars: 3.31
WWE ECW: 2.57
WWE NXT: 2.31

Average Amount of Wrestling Per Hour for All Seven Shows: 15.06 Minutes

Average Amount of Wrestling Per Hour by Show

Ring of Honor: 26.72 Minutes
WWE Superstars: 20.29 Minutes
WWE ECW: 18.86 Minutes
WWE Smackdown: 14.29 Minutes
WWE Raw: 12.58 Minutes
TNA Impact: 12.40 Minutes
WWE NXT: 10.42 Minutes

Average Match Length for all Shows: 5.41 Minutes

Average Match Length by Show

Ring of Honor: 7.66 Minutes
WWE ECW: 7.33 Minutes
WWE Superstars: 6.13 Minutes
WWE Smackdown: 5.55 Minutes
TNA Impact: 4.80 Minutes
WWE NXT: 4.51 Minutes
WWE Raw: 4.44 Minutes

PWI