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WWE drew a 2.33 rating, the third straight week under 2.4. Plus, the fall TV trend of viewership declining each hour continued.
WWE Raw TV Ratings Report
— October 12: Monday’s Raw scored a 2.33 rating, basically the same as a 2.35 rating last week and 2.33 rating two weeks ago.
In the key demographic ratings, Raw dipped more than one-tenth of a rating in males 18-34 & 18-49 to a one-month low. Adults 18-49 was about the same as the previous four weeks during the start of Fall TV Season.
– Raw averaged 3.284 million viewers, down three percent from last week’s audience of 3.378 million viewers. This was the fewest viewers of the year, an historical low going back to the mid-1990s, and in the same territory as Christmas Eve Raw 2012.
Once again, the third hour of Raw leaked viewers as the show went on, nearly drawing fewer than 3.0 million viewers.
Hourly Break Down: 3.518 million first hour viewers (most in one month), 3.254 million second hour viewers, and 3.082 million third hour viewers.
By comparison, Monday Night Football on ESPN drew a pretty standard audience of 12.1 million viewers for a competitive game that came down to the last play of the game.
– One year ago this week, Raw drew a 2.74 rating, four-tenths of a rating (15 percent) higher than this week’s episode.
Two years ago this week, Raw drew a 2.88 rating. Three years ago this week was a 2.79 rating.
Raw did 3.285 million. To my math is a 2.25 not a 2.3? Memo to Jason Powell and Wade Keller, Seth Rollins is talented yes, but he is not OVER I repeat not OVER! Wrasslin 101, please look this up!
This is proving that Seth Rollins has been a terrible champion. Yes he is a talented in the ring but his character and his promos make me fast forward threw most of his segments.
Seth Rollins is one of the few bright spots. The problem is throwing him in a feud with Kane. WWE has lost its way. From the locker room to the ring to the announce, it sucks! Please Lord give us an alternative!
poor book for rollins. Hard to invest into anything they are doing on raw. The only thing going is the New Day. Rollins has like these mini fueds which are doing nothing for his character. And there is clearly no one that compliments him. I dont get why he would fued with cena and then sting. just send bray wyatt on him and have some continuity with story lines, man if they just teased taker vs sting people would go bananas.
There is no sole reason for the slump in ratings as of late. It has been a gradual decline over the past 10-15 years with a huge number of bad decisions being made by WWE, never learning from their mistakes.
However, one of the biggest problems is the 3 hour format. And it’s not that it’s 3 hours per se, but the fact they have no idea how to make it work other than book a traditional 2 hour show and stretch it thin over 3 hours. It is impossible to create any excitement to tune in each week when all you are doing is placing wrestlers in meaningless matches with no character development.
I also think PG is a problem – and no I don’t mean the PG rating. I’m not calling for a return to needless bloodshed, T’n’A (not TNA) and a late 90’s “attitude” – I mean the fact that the show is continously becoming more and more aimed at children, with goofy storylines that even a boy at the age of 10 would find cringeworthy. And this is for a television show that runs on late into the night. WWE have always thrown the adult viewers a bone, even as they have become more child-friendly, with CM Punk a few years ago and now Brock Lesnar – but what is there for any adult to tune in to each week at the moment? Especially when Brock is not on TV
I think this is why wrestling podcasting has taken off huge in the past few years – adults still want to watch wrestling, but they’re not finding what they want anywhere anymore. Podcasts are the new frontier for this lost element in wrestling, where guys can hear two grown men sit and talk to each other about the “good old days”, whether it be a PWTorch podcast or a wrestlier-hosted podcast such as Stone Cold or Taz’s. There’s way more buzz about Brock Lesnar on the Stone Cold podcast next week than the PPV coming up, for example.
To go on with some further thoughts — Though NXT is popular with the hardcore fans, it’s not touching the mainstream and never will. The format is too “indie” and I think it’s doing a disservice to WWE that it’s influence is finding its way more and more into the main WWE product. Vince Russo made a pretty good point recently that I find hard to disagree with.. if the NXT stars are apparently so “over” with the fans, then why has the slump continued in ratings as Raw becomes more and more populated with NXT alumni? Yeah, you can put the blame on Vince or the creative team for everything, like everyone does (and of course they do deserve a huge part of the blame), but there has to come a point where talent is pointed at for being complacent. Just compare Owens, Rollins and Ambrose to Rock, Austin and Cena and it’s easy to see why a mass audience isn’t impressed. In fact, the new bunch are not even close to the star power and charisma that CM Punk had, never mind the other. WWE is in deep trouble.
And the two guys that I felt they had a chance with connecting at a mass level – Bray Wyatt and Roman Reigns – they have completely screwed over with awful creative decisions time and time again over the past couple of years. Not putting over both these guys at WM31 is looking more and more like a huge mistake. Now they’re stuck in a mid-card feud with each other with a terrible storyline and no heat whatsoever, and it’s driving both guys into the ground.
On a more positive note: loving the new site design
Seth Rollins is the most talented performer on the roster, the booking he is saddled with is killing him. It is the Punk and Daniel Bryan story, incredible talents saddled with awful booking, so the champs get the blame for low ratings when it is clearly creatives and Vince McMahons fault
Couldn’t agree more!
It’s true that Seth is a talented performer but — as a 30-year fan here — his promos aren’t the greatest, and they bore me. I don’t know if it’s him or not, though, because it’s CREATIVE that’s giving him this crap, just like they give it to everyone, and force-feed it to us.
I’d love to see McMahon come in, lose his mind one Monday afternoon, fire EVERY SINGLE FREAKING WRITER and tell his daughter not to hire another individual from Hollywood. “Wrestling” has a lot of problems right now, but I want to see:
* No more whiny “world champions.”
* No more pushes related to “Total Divas.”
* No more “authority figures.”
* I.E., no more “Authority.”
And I know, I know… I need to wake up, because what I want, I’m not going to get.
Well said!
I don’t think I’ve honestly watched Raw since the night after WrestleMania, earlier this year (…maybe I watched a bit the week after, also).
Looking back, I don’t think putting the WWE Title on Rollins was the best idea. Rollings reminds me of a 1993/1994 HBK — but not a 1996/1997 HBK. I believe it would have been better to groom him more first and give him a healthy IC title run. Perhaps, instead, they should’ve kept the belt on Brock and just have him go on hiatus (and why not hype him, in the meantime, by showing footage of him in the crowds at UFC pay-per-views?).
I also think this weekly U.S. Title challenge they’ve apparently been doing with Cena is short-sighted. Having him go through one mid-card superstar a week doesn’t, IMO, put anybody over. Couldn’t they have made this “challenge” series a monthly thing on pay-per-view, instead?
Anyhow, nothing they’ve got going on currently (from what I’ve been reading) is appealing enough for me to tune in. I agree with Mitch’s post, in that Vince should change his business model in the writing dept. and just get rid of the ‘Hollywood’ writers and go back to having a smaller “inner-circle” of minds that know the business. They should also heavily consider scaling Raw back to 2 hours and, maybe, removing Smackdown entirely.