Former WWE Agent Arn Anderson recently discussed WWE’s penchant for shorter television matches in the modern era. Whilst Anderson did talk about the lengthier bouts that go over two segments on the ARN podcast; Anderson also revealed exactly why WWE tries to keep a big proportion of their televised matches as short as possible.

“Whoever did their research, and I put that in parentheses” Arn Anderson began on the show. “Whoever took their polls and did all that behind the scenes stuff that they need 100 people working for the company to come up with? They figured out a six minute time span. That’s about all the audience’s good for, then they’re ready to switch channels.”

“Well, that that six minute thing? Well that looks good, until you take entrances out of that six minutes. And then you take exit time, aftermath, posing in the ring…that’s another minute. So if I did my math right that six minutes now became what? Three minutes, right? We’re back to that time, that three minute deal.”

Anderson would then talk about why a three minute match is detrimental to the talent themselves. “And the thing about it is, when you give every match six minutes because that’s the brilliant thing that you came up through all your research? When you have every match go six minutes? Then it starts to look pretty uniform, and it’s a bunch of matches that don’t have enough time, except ding ding ding hurry hurry hurry. Then run through a couple spots and get your finish. There’s no story there.”

Arn would finish by saying how even the longer matches on the show are devalued because the talent are being overexposed on RAW and SmackDown. “And some of those guys that are getting the two segment matches later on in the show? When those guys have already been seen twice during the show, and then you give them the two segments, it’s probably too much exposure.”