Raw Rating: Royal Rumble season and Goldberg advertised appearance leads to jump, year-ago perspective (w/Keller’s Analysis)

Last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw scored the best rating since Aug. 29 last year, a 2.29 rating. That’s up from the 2.16 rating last week and the 2.03 rating two weeks ago. It is well above the ten-week rolling average coming into this week of 2.059 and well above the December and November averages of 2.00 and 2.07, respectively. It is, however, well below the rating of one year ago which was 2.93.

Raw began with 3.31 million viewers in the first hour followed by growth in the second hour to 3.46 and then 3.11 in the third hour. The dropoff from the first to the third hour was a mere 198,000, below the 272,000 average of the prior ten weeks. That can be credited in great part to Goldberg, who continues to generate better ratings than otherwise would be expected for shows and segments he’s in.

Keller’s Analysis: It’s never bad news when the rating goes up, but it’s mitigated by the fact that one year ago the January average through four weeks was 2.56 compared to the 2.14 rating this January. The jump from this week to last week was 0.13. The jump last year was 0.48. That said, the Rumble took place earlier last year, so the jump came the day after the Rumble. A more fair comparison is the jump from two weeks compared to one week before the Rumble. That was 0.09, so this was a bigger jump when using that comparison.