205 Live is failing for a few reasons.
1. WWE has always done their shows like the circus, with a little of everything for everyone. If you don't like the bears, you can watch the trapeze artists. If you don't like the lion tamer, you can watch the clowns. Now they've decided to make each niche the main show, which is why the UK show is going to do just as bad (plus they have a lot of SHITTY talent outside of Dunne/Bate), and a women's only show if one comes after the tournament. Individual niche promotions almost never work and always have to branch out into adding different types of matches/talent to balance out if they want to grow/stay open. See: FMW, BJW, Michinoku Pro, IWA (all versions around the world).
2. This is an era where content is king in all fields. If you do a podcast, you have to constantly keep pumping shit out. If you do a blog, you have to constantly keep pumping shit out. You basically have to overflood your own market otherwise your audience will find something else that gets their attention. This leads to WWE producing nearly 9 hours of new content per week, plus whatever they're doing for the Network, which is pretty constantly updated with new, first run content just to have it. Content content content. This isn't only a WWE problem, either. I've been trying to keep up with NJPW as it happens this year and they have just as much shit pumped out as WWE. Even skipping Road To... shows AND no longer watching things before intermission, the shows are still 2 1/2-3 hours long. In the case of things like the G1/NJ Cup/BOSJ, you've got shit spread out over 10+ shows sometimes, so even picking and choosing which talents you want to watch means you're still going to have to go through 5 or 6 shows. There's too much to keep up with from just one wrestling promotion at a time, let alone multiple, plus TV/Movies/Games/Music/Life.
3. Even if everyone on WWE Network was watching 205 Live, it's still just 1/3rd of the audience. For most live crowds, the time they see cruiserweights on Raw or after SD are the only time they've seen them. I think that's a big reason why 205 Live has dragged out their storylines for so long, because it's basically a new audience every week, so they essentially just run the same angle over and over. At SD, by the time they finally see the cruiserweights, they've been there close to 3 hours, half the audience needs to leave because they have to work or get their kids to school in the morning, and the ones that are left are tired and numb. For Raw crowds, I think having to get an extra long video package or backstage segment before and after the cruiserweights come out so they can get the ring changed kills any momentum the shows could have.
4. The cruiserweights being suck in their own universe only competing against the same small group of guys means there is no upward mobility and nothing they do matters. WCW cruiserweights frequently competed with bigger talents, and the guys that were good and popular enough would start going up the ranks and competing for the TV/US/Tag titles. This is not a possibility for the cruiserweights as it stands, so all of their work, no matter how good, is ultimately meaningless for them and fans. On top of this, WWE spent most of the past decade+ working on making guys who traditionally would have been cruiserweights into valid WWE Champions and immediately took a giant step back to pigeonhole everyone of a certain size as too small to compete with heavyweights again. This is after Benoit/Eddie/Rey/Bryan/Balor/Rollins before HGH/Jericho/Punk/AJ/Jeff Hardy/Christian were champions.
It's definitely not that the guys on 205 Live are having heavyweight style matches with chin locks and no flips (except for the one or two guys who do that to get heel heat). They're doing the craziest shit on any show every week. Niche products/shows have niche audiences. The audience that wanted 205 Live was much smaller than they anticipated coming out of the CWC, which is not a sustainable year round concept to begin with.
WWE could have NXT as a brand with KENTA, Chris Hero, Tommy End, La Sombra, Neville, Tyler Bate, Pete Dunne, Asuka, Athena, Nikki Storm, Ciampa, Gargano, Akira Tozawa, Cedric Alexander, Austin Aries (if you absolutely have to, I guess), Jack Gallagher, Máscara Dorada, Rich Swann, Spanky, Drew McIntyre, Roderick Strong, and Biff Busick. Instead, you've got them all spread out across 3 different "brands", while filling in the gaps with shitbirds like Eric Young, TJP, those bland dudes from Australia/NOAH, and the ultimate euro cunt piece of shit Noam Dar.
