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KELLER'S TAKE
KELLER BLOG: Thoughts on Monday night cable ratings, Ross's hat, ESPN-WWE coverage, Raw poll results, in-house notes Oct 6, 2009 - 1:17:51 PM
-Early ratings returns for Monday Night Football are coming at 14.2, which would make it the highest rated cable TV program ever if that holds up when final numbers are released in a few hours. Right now in our PWTorch reader poll, the average predicted rating is in the 3.0-3.1 range. The conventional wisdom is that Raw will draw under a 3.0 because many regular viewers were glued to the Viking-Packer game. The contrarian point of view is that so many more people were watching cable because of the Vikings-Packers game, including some channel flipping casual WWE fans, that Raw may benefit, especially at halftime. My hunch is Raw will suffer, not benefit, and I'm predicting a 2.7 rating. Raw took a hit when the Red Sox and Yankees had a game seven several years back and I think they'll suffer a similar fate this time.
-I was among those watching the Vikings-Packers game instead of Raw. I usually tape Vikings games on Monday nights and watch Raw, but even this game I couldn't risk hearing the result of ahead of time or having a catastrophic DVR failure, so I'm still not quite finished with watching Raw yet, but from what I saw, it wasn't a must-see Raw even for WWE fans. Not that WWE threw in the towel, as featuring Ben Rothlisberger showed they wanted to latch onto the NFL-themed evening, but there's nothing they could have done to compete with the Vikings-Packers if it was high-scoring and competitive, which it was during the duration of Raw.
-So far in our MVP poll, Ben Roethlisberger is in third place, behind Big Show & Chris Jericho and The Miz in reader voting but it's a relatively close three-way race. Our 0-10 poll is all over the place, with more 0.0 and 1.0 scores than usual (17 percent), but the top scores getting votes are 7.0 and 8.0 with 41 percent of all votes, but third place is 4.0 with 12 percent. Go figure.
-Jim Ross wrote in his latest blog: "ESPN surprised me with their coverage of Big Ben's guest hosting shot Monday night on Raw. The Steelers had a great time from what I could see which comes as no surprise. The Steelers QB has been a WWE fan for long time." The ESPN coverage was surprisingly kind, but as Jason Powell pointed out over at prowrestling.net, ESPN didn't cover Roethlisberger's appearance on Raw until after the MNF game ended.
-This is neither here nor there, but my favorite "favicon" (the icon that shows up in the browser address when you're at a certain website) is Jim Ross's at his website. I crack a little smile everytime I see the outline of Ross's head wearing that cowboy hat. It's like a tiny little J.R. staring at me as I work. (I'm wondering if now he can mention PWTorch by name for saying something nice about his site since he recently gave a competitor a full-on URL plug for doing something he felt was wrong! Do we have to disrespect good ol' J.R. in a way that calls for a rebuttal in order to get a plug over there?)
-In case you hadn't heard, PWTorch assistant editor James Caldwell is on his honeymoon. A big congratulations to James and his bride Leslie who were married on Saturday. He'll be back later this week diving back into PWTorch.com, but in the mean time he's taking a well-deserved break after about 50 straight weeks of full-time work on the site since he started full time last fall.
-One UFC note. Former amateur wrestler Mark Coleman, Tito Ortiz's opponent for UFC 106 (on the same card as Brock Lesnar's UFC Heavyweight Title defense against Shane Carwin) withdrew from the fight, so a replacement needs to be set. For details on that story, check out our article at MMATorch.com
-Keep the reader comments on Raw and Hell in a Cell coming for our Reader Reax articles: pwtorch@gmail.com.
Send feedback on this article to pwtorch@gmail.com and we'll regularly publish reader feedback in the "Torch Feedback" category on the Main Listing.
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AND NEW FOR 2009! Monthly "Vintage Audio Torch Talks." We are releasing for the first time ever audio versions of our text Torch Talk updates, the historical first series of insider interviews ever. Wade Keller's newsmaking in-depth interviews with wrestling's biggest names are now being made available exclusively to VIP members. But you must be a member each month, as these are not archived, so they are replaced with a new one each month! This debuted in January 2009 with a 68 minute interview with the late "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith. Who's next? Hulk Hogan? Eric Bischoff? The Rock? Goldberg? Jeff Hardy?
