SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Without NFL or college football competition, this week’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network drew a 2.21 rating, well above the rolling ten week average headed into this week of 1.956. it’s the first rating above 2.00 since Nov. 13 and Nov. 20, each of which drew 2.14 ratings. It’s the highest rating since August 28 last year.
The dropoff from the first to the third hour was steep, though. The first hour drew 3.573 million viewers and the third hour drew 2.814 million viewers, a dropoff of 759,000, the biggest dropoff since Oct. 23 and well above the 441,000 ten-week rolling average headed into this week.
One year ago Raw drew a 2.16 rating and two years ago Raw drew a 2.45 rating.
Keller’s Analysis: The follow-up to the Braun Strowman angle at the start might have helped spike ratings, and the viewership held up into the second hour pretty well with only a 210,000 dropoff in the second hour. The third hour, with Finn Balor vs. Seth Rollins as the headline match, did not do well relative to the first two hours, but it was still the most viewed third hour since Aug. 28.
The bottom line is that moving Raw to three hours wasn’t a good idea by any stretch. Triple H even stated this on the Stone Cold Podcast a couple of years ago. It’s just too long and too much of a commitment for anybody with any kind of family or responsibilities in their lives – even in this era of PVRs.
Just my opinion.
While this is good news when compared with the very low ratings they have been drawing. It is still a very, very low rating compared to the glory days of wrestling. They have a long way to go to “good ratings.”