By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE Raw on Monday, September 16 scored a 2.96 rating following Night of Champions, up slightly from a 2.91 rating leading into Night of Champions.

Raw eeked out four million viewers, averaging 4.013 million viewers over the course of three hours. Raw was up three percent from last week's average of 3.886 million viewers.

Hourly Break Down: First Hour - a show-low 3.865 million viewers for the immediate PPV fall-out, Second Hour - show-high 4.162 million viewers for Dusty-Stephanie and chaos, Third Hour - 4.012 million viewers.

- On cable TV Monday night, Raw ranked #2 behind Monday Night Football in total viewers and in the key demos. ESPN's Monday Night Football averaged 14.3 million viewers, a decline of two million viewers from the Eagles-Redskins prime time game last week, which averaged 16.5 million viewers.

Despite the drop-off for football, Raw's post-PPV episode only gained about 130,000 viewers compared to last week's show.

In the week-to-week demographics, Raw was up and down one-tenth of a rating in the key demos of males 18-49 and males 18-34, respectively.

The biggest change was Raw losing younger viewers. The unpredictable males 12-17 demo dropped to a four-month low and the males 12-34 demo dropped to a two-month low.

- One year ago this week, the post-Night of Champions episode scored a 2.87 rating and averaged 4.051 million viewers. This year's Raw was up in the rating, but down in viewership.

Caldwell's Analysis: There just was not as much buzz coming out of Night of Champions compared to recent PPVs. It's an acceptable rating versus football - rounding to a 3.0 - but there's a sense of audience fatigue with the McMahon Family Power Trip storyline. It's why it was important for the babyfaces to finally stand tall at the end of Monday's Raw to offer the audience some "hope."

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