SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s (4/22) Monday Night Raw on USA Network drew a 1.70 rating, the lowest rating since Jan. 7 and down from last week’s 1.88 rating for the Superstar Shake-up and the 2.02 for the post-WrestleMania edition.
One year ago this week, Raw drew a 2.09 rating and two years ago this week it drew a 2.04 rating. The 2019 average so far is 1.86, down from 2.29 through this week last year and 2.27 through this week two years ago. In other words, this year so far is a sharp drop-off from what had been a steadying of ratings in 2018 and 2017 during this time of the year.
The April average so far is 1.85, down from 1.93 last month and 1.88 two months ago and 1.80 in January.
The first hour drew drew 2.680 million viewers, down 90,000 from last week. The second hour drew 2.296 million, down a sharp 400,000 from last week, and the third hour drew 2.146 million, also down 400,000 from last week. The first-to-third hour drop-off was 534,000, the biggest since Jan. 21.
That means while a modestly smaller audience tuned in at the start of the show, there was a cliff drop for the second and third hour. Viewers were not enthused by what they saw in the first hour, apparently, which featured the debut of A.J. Styles on the Raw brand.
In the Monday cable ratings, Raw finished behind two NBA playoff games on TNT (Jazz-Rockets, Bucks-Pistons) with 0.9, 0.8, and 0.8 ratings in the key 18-49 demographic, behind the 1.2 and 1.0 ratings in that demo for the NBA. In total viewers, the Rockets-Jazz NBA game drew 2.963 million and the Bucks-Pistons game drew 2.811 million, more than Raw’s best hour. Nothing else on cable drew 2 million viewers or more. The NHL’s top rated game (Capitals-Hurricanes) drew 992,000 viewers on NBC SportsNetwork.
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