Raw Rating: Raw first hour holds top key demo spot, but sub-2M third hour falls below “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta,” plus key metrics and perspective

Last night’s episode (6/10) of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network drew a 1.54 rating, down from last week’s 1.72 and the lowest rating of the year and the lowest non-holiday rating of all-time.

Raw opened with first hour viewership slightly above last week – 2.380 million (compared to 2.308 million last week). That’s also above the first hour viewership from two weeks ago, but among the lowest of all-time.

The second hour dropped to 2.086 million, nearly 500,000 lower than last week’s second hour rating (built around the “bait and switch” angle with Brock Lesnar and the “breaking news” that he’d cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase), and slightly more than than 500,000 below the first hour average so far this year.

The third hour plummeted to 1.9o9 million, only the third time an hour of Raw has drawn under two million. The other two times were last year’s Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve editions. The third hour went up against a potentially deciding NBA Finals game between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors. The first-to-third hour drop-off was 471,000, above 381,000 drop-off average so far this year.

One year ago Raw drew a 1.90 rating. Two years ago it drew a 1.75 rating. The average rating this year is 1.79; one year ago through this week the average rating was 2.18. That’s a drop of 18 percent.

Only Raw’s first hour beat “Love & Hip Hop Atlanta” on VH1 for the top spot in the 18-49 key demographic rankings with a 0.8 rating. The second hour of Raw tied “Love & Hip Hop” with a 0.7 rating. The third hour of Raw finished with a 0.6 rating. Other than losing to top rated sports special events or major breaking news story coverage, Raw holds the top three spots in the key demo rating. This was perhaps the first time a regular cable series beat two of Raw’s hours in the key demo rating.

Fox News programs “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight” drew more viewers than Raw by a wide margin, but in the above -49 year old demographic.

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