By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

Last night's episode of WWE Raw scored a 2.37 household rating and a 2.74 coverage rating, which we track. The show was down from last week's previous year-low 2.80 rating.

Raw averaged 3.80 million viewers over the course of the show, down 3.0 percent compared to last week's lowest viewership total of the year. Raw's first hour averaged 3.72 million viewers and increased to 3.88 million viewers in the second hour.

Raw TV viewership was the lowest in nearly three years dating back to 3.75 million viewers for the Christmas Eve episode on December 24, 2007.

Looking at the Raw TV ratings, the last time Raw had back-to-back episodes below the 3.00 benchmark was nearly two years ago. The Oct. 20 and 27, 2008 episodes each scored 2.90 ratings.

Caldwell's Analysis: This was expected with Raw up against a battle of undefeated, big football market teams on ESPN's Monday Night Football, plus more fall season competition on network and cable TV. Looking at Raw, the show needs a spark. They failed to set themselves up for the fall season with the de-emphasis on the Nexus storyline that could have carried Raw into an ultra-competitive fall season. Randy Orton as WWE champion was their replacement plan, but WWE hasn't put the type of juice behind Orton necessary to make him a must-see act every week on Raw. It's reaching that point where WWE will have to do something big at the Hell in a Cell PPV leading into something big on Raw to build some momentum. The current product is not getting the job done.

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