SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network drew a 1.92 rating among live and same-night-DVR viewership, down from last week’s New Year’s Day episode, which drew a 1.94. Last night’s show went up against a highly-competitive college football championship game.
The rolling ten-week average headed into this week was 1.96, including a lower than average Christmas night edition. The 2017 average was 2.06.
The hourly dropoff was above average, with 2.993 million in the first hour and 2.502 million in the third hour, for a drop of 491,000. The average dropoff the last year is around 290,000.
One year ago, Raw drew a 2.03 rating and two years ago it drew a 2.36 rating.
Keller’s Analysis: This wasn’t unexpected up against that highly rated college football championship. The dropoff is most likely attributable to the competitiveness of the college football game as the main event was pretty strong featuring Balor Club vs. “Champions Club” (with an eye-roll from Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins).
wwe is dying, wrestle kingdom from NJPW destroyed anything wwe has done in years, WM34 will be a mediocre event capped by a poorly received last match of reigns vs brock
Exactly right!!
Look,WWE failed in the ratings (as it usually tends to for the past several years) because the format is extremely predictable, the “big” highlights are often some over the top nonsensical cartoon-like foolishness (so really,Strowman pulled down a massive backstage set on Kane and Lesner? Really? Why would anyone in their right mind be invested in the fake garbage?), and so on. I get it, WWE isn’t a real sport. The problem is that (among many other problems), it doesn’t even try to be anything remotely close to a somewhat real-looking combat “sport”. Week in and week out they insult our intelligence. College football has nothing to do with that. Nothing.