By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE Raw on Monday, September 22 fell to a year-low 2.69 rating despite being the night after a PPV.

Raw was down from a 2.79 rating, which was down from a 2.88 rating two weeks ago. It was the lowest rating since December 23 of last year.

Raw drew 3.879 million viewers, which was up one percent from last week.

Hourly Break Down: 4.000 million flat first hour viewers, decline to 3.790 million second hour viewers, and a slight uptick to 3.847 million third hour viewers.

It was the least-watched second hour of the year against NFL Football and other new TV programs premiering at 9:00 p.m. EST.

- The question is what was most affected on Monday night to cause the latest decline for Raw.

Overall, the key demo ratings were virtually even with last week's show, which points to viewers outside of the m18-49 window tuning out of Raw this week for football or other programming.

Looking further at the 9:00 p.m. hour, the hour was down 10 percent in women 18-49 and 8 percent in m18-49 compared to last week's show.

Also, the Raw demos that matter most to USA Network and advertisers were much lower on Monday than the same week last year against football and Fall Season premieres. Most notably, m18-49 was off two-tenths of a rating from the same week last year.

Caldwell's Analysis: To hit a year-low TV rating the night after a PPV - even against a strong football match-up and Fall TV premieres - should be alarming. It points to WWE losing viewers by the week with poor writing and a lack of top-line stars being developed. WWE got Dean Ambrose back this week, so that should help the star category going forward, but they have to take a long-term approach to making the guts of the show mean something and not seem like a segment-by-segment parade of filler or dumb humor just trying to fill three hours of TV.

One bad week is excusable, two bad weeks is concerning, but three straight weeks of poor TV means there is a problem and it needs to be addressed. They're not only losing the key male audience, but they're losing the broad male & female audience that USA is looking for. Combined with the poor Nielsen Twitter TV Rating for Monday's show, Raw really needs an overhaul to re-attract the audience. But, knowing WWE, they'll go for a short-term fix like bringing back Vince McMahon, instead of overhauling the booking for the long-term benefit of Raw.

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