2/8 WWE Raw Quarter-Hour Ratings Break Down – D-Bryan Retirement Show highlights Raw is too long

The quarter-hour and minute-by-minute TV ratings obtained by PWTorch for Monday’s Raw (February 8) captures the psychology of the average Raw viewer.

The conclusion from the numbers is (a) Raw is too long and (b) viewers were primed for Daniel Bryan’s retirement speech early and mid-way through, but struggled to get to the finish line when Bryan’s speech finally happened in what turned out to be the “fourth hour” of Raw.

2/8 WWE Raw Break Down – Bellwether M18-49 Demo

– Raw popped a big audience in the first quarter-hour of the show. Raw averaged 1.157 million m18-49 viewers (1.84 rating) in the first 15 minutes.

Compare that to two weeks ago for the post-Royal Rumble episode. Q1 – when viewers would have been tuning in for immediate Rumble fall-out – only averaged 926,000 m18-49 viewers (1.47 rating).

This week, after the big Q1 audience, Raw fell off the remainder of the first hour.

– Raw popped another big audience at the top of the second hour.

Q5 averaged a show-high 1.230 million m18-49 viewers (1.95 rating). That nearly topped The Rock’s big Q9 segment on post-Rumble Raw, which averaged 1.258 million m18-49 viewers (2.00 rating).

The big audience at the top of the second hour appeared to be a combination of people tuning in to find out how WWE was handling Bryan’s retirement, the top of the hour, and what was actually presented – Miz TV/Highlight Reel with Chris Jericho, The Miz, and A.J. Styles.

The audience then dropped 13 percent from a show-high in Q5 to a show-low in Q6. The second hour dragged until re-peaking at the end of the hour in Q8…

– Q8 drew an unusually large audience of 1.2 million m18-49 viewers (1.90 rating). A big portion of the audience was at the very end of Q8 when Dean Ambrose called out Brock Lesnar for a fight.

– In a rarity, Q8 actually outdrew Q9 (the top of the third hour). Q9 averaged 1.174 million m18-49 viewers, down slightly from 1.2 million in Q8.

What appeared to happen is the Ambrose-Lesnar fight stretched from the end of Q8 into the early start of Q9, then Raw went to an early commercial. There was also no Bryan retirement speech, so viewers tuned out in droves after the end of the Ambrose-Lesnar fight.

The trendline: 1.332 million viewers at 9:57 p.m., 1.390 million at the end of the second hour, 1.440 million at 10:00 p.m., a peak of 1.447 million at 10:02 p.m., and then Raw went to break.

The second-half of Q9 only reached 1.146 million viewers at 10:11 p.m.

Earlier in the quarter, the peak audience of the entire show was the 1.447 million viewers for the Brock-Ambrose fight.

– From there, it was downhill for the remainder of the third hour, which hurt the overall third hour viewership. It was more pronounced this week since the audience was primed for Bryan’s retirement segment in the first two hours, naturally exhausting interest in the show.

Raw dragged to the end of the hour and finally reached D-Bryan’s retirement speech at the top of the “fourth hour” for what turned into a 25-minute over-run…

– Bryan’s retirement speech in “Q13” averaged 1.233 million viewers (1.96 rating), barely topping the Q5 peak audience during the regulation portion of the show.

The quarter-hours actually split into a “Q14” over-run period, which fell four percent to 1.172 million viewers (1.86 rating).

Overall, the 25-minute segment averaged 1.217 million m18-49 viewers (1.93 rating).

As the trendline shows, there was not a big jump in viewership at any point during the speech. The peak was 1.296 million viewers at 11:08 p.m. and the audience hovered just below that throughout the entire speech until the final five minutes when Raw stretched into “Q14.”

Overall Raw Flow (M18-49 Demo)

First Hour

– Q1: 1.157 million viewers (1.84 rating)

– Q2: 1.041 million viewers (1.65 rating)

– Q3: 1.097 million viewers (1.74 rating)

– Q4: 1.056 million viewers (1.68 rating)

Second Hour

– Q5: Show-High 1.230 million viewers (1.95 rating)

– Q6: Show-Low 1.065 million viewers (1.69 rating)

– Q7: 1.111 million viewers (1.76 rating)

– Q8: 1.199 million viewers (1.90 rating)

Third Hour

– Q9: 1.174 million viewers (1.86 rating). The quarter-by-quarter decline began…

– Q10: 1.103 million viewers (1.75 rating)

– Q11: 1.088 million viewers (1.73 rating)

– Q12: 1.077 million viewers (1.71 rating)

Over-Run

– Q13: 1.233 million viewers (1.96 rating)

– Q14: 1.172 million viewers (1.86 rating)