SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw (10/1) drew a 1.63 rating, down from last week’s 1.64, and thus again ranks as one of the lowest rated Raws in all of Raw history.
Whereas last week’s story within the hourly numbers was the sharp drop-off from hour one (2.493 million) to hour two (2.275 million), this week’s story is the drop-off from the second hour (2.325 million) to the third hour (2.081 million). The third hour average this year is 2.80 million, and the Jan. 22 episode earlier this year drew nearly double the viewership (4.147 million).
The third hour featured the end of The Shield-Braun & Drew & Dolph angle, the long segment with Elias and Kevin Owens with the crowd booing, a Bobby Lashley vs. Kevin Owens match, a Bayley vs. Alicia Fox match, and the Shawn Michaels in-ring interview with ending with surprise appearances by Undertaker, Triple H, and Kane.
The first hour drew 2.500 million viewers, so the viewership dropped every hour. The drop from the first to third hour (419,000) was only the fourth time viewership dropped more than 400,000 since WrestleMania earlier this year.
The ratings for Raw the last two years on this same Monday were 1.93 and 1.92, so this week’s and last week’s rating appears to be showing signs of a lower “new normal” for the program. The 2018 average so far is 2.05, down from 2.10 through this week last year.
In the key 18-49 demographic cable rankings for the evening, as charted by TVByTheNumbers, Raw finished in the sixth, seventh, and eighth spots in the top ten behind ESPN’s Monday Night Football related shows (positions 1-4) and “Love & Hip Hop Hollywood” on VH1. In total viewership, Raw finished behind 11 other shows in total viewers on Monday night, including mostly news/politics shows on Fox News and MSNBC.
CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S RATINGS REPORT: Raw Ratings: A nearly record-low rating and sharp drop-off for last night’s USA Network flagship program (w/Keller’s Analysis)
They don’t need their fans anymore, apparently. Stock number through the roof, new deals for Raw and Smackdown in the future, global shows on the Network paid for, among others, by Saudi Arabia. Stephanie has no drive to turn away from a crappy product. Ironically the network (and our own libraries) may be all we can see of actual wrestling without this force-fed product.
I’ve been threatening for years, I’m a 33-year fan. To me, this is the lowest point ever. It boggles my mind how business has changed to the point they don’t really have to have anyone watching their cable broadcasts.
I stopped watching about 18 months ago after losing the will to sit through 3 hours of mind-numbing awfulness.
Last month the network reeled me back in with a $1 for 2 months network promotion for Hell in a Cell.
Wow. It was horrible – even after only paying a dollar, I still felt cheated and cancelled.
But hey, as long as there are desperate despots willing to offer millions of dollars to try and whitewash their regimes (whilst bombing the crap out of their neighbours), the McMahons don’t have to care.
Sad times.
I’ve been saying this for years. Stephanie McMahon is a cancer in WWE eating it away from the inside. I’m sure she’s a quality human being as evidenced by her charity work, but as a pro wrestling executive and especially on air character, she is destroying the product.