Despite featuring its two most pivotal segments in the final hour, WWE RAW suffered a notable viewership drop in its final hour this week.
Very attributable to Monday’s Olympics coverage, which featured most of its key moments from 10PM onward, those segments involving Triple H, Shawn Michaels and Brock Lesnar and then John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan both particularly underwhelmed.
According to F4WOnline.com, the former segment added only 232,000 viewers from the prior one with Kelly Kelly vs. Eve, which reflects a very weak gain for the top of the 10PM hour. While the segment did technically attract the show’s top viewership level, top-of-the-hour segments involving big names are typically expected to add more than 500,000 viewers.
By comparison, the Randy Orton vs. Big Show segment at 9PM added 480,000 viewers from the preceding one.
Equally disappointing was the spike for the final match between John Cena and Daniel Bryan, which added only 345,000 viewers to the mix following two segments (Ziggler vs. Riley and Kane vs. The Miz) that lost a combined 600,000 viewers from the peak set by HHH/Lesnar/HBK.
While the Olympics are definitely to blame for at least part of the weakness, it should be noted that the prior week’s overrun match between John Cena and Big Show attracted more than a million new viewers, which does indicate that fans did not find Cena vs. Bryan as appealing.
