Despite a minor increase over last week, the news stemming from this week’s WWE RAW rating was not all positive.
Monday’s telecast posted a 3.4 (via rounding), up slightly from last week’s 3.3 household rating. While an increase is always good, especially because this week’s show did not benefit post-PPV buzz, there are reasons to keep WWE from getting too excited.
For starters, this week’s Monday Night Football game did a significantly lower rating than last week’s record-breaking telecast. The minor increase indicates that RAW did not pickup a notable portion of the NFL audience (and thus means WWE cannot fully blame last week’s low number on the heavy NFL competition).
Further, the show lost viewers as it progressed, posting hours of 3.4 and 3.3; such a trend is almost always a sign that viewers were not especially hooked by the broadcast.
And, as focus of a lot of television industry members has shifted to demographic numbers, as opposed to the household rating, there was additional disappointment for WWE. PWTorch notes that the show did a 2.39 rating among males in the 18-49 demographic, which is the lowest demo figure since November of 2008.