Panic was indeed warranted after last week’s WWE RAW delivered some of its worst non-holiday viewership totals since 1997.
Things got significantly worse this week.
Monday’s three-hour show dipped to a 1.2 adults 18-49 rating, which is abysmal by the show’s standards. With a viewership average of just 3.50 million, RAW’s audience slipped 10% from last week’s already-scary 3.79 million tally.
Competition from Monday Night Football was expectedly fierce–the high-profile Bears vs. Cowboys game drew a 6.8 rating with 16.62 million viewers–but that is, in itself, not enough of an excuse to warrant such a poor performance from RAW. WWE’s Monday flagship is clearly missing the boat with television viewers, and the three-hour length is not helping matters.
The one positive is that RAW delivered its best adults 18-49 number in the 10PM hour (though viewership still fell from 9PM). That desirable trend was once the norm for RAW, but with viewers clearly tiring from a three-hour broadcast, the final hour had become increasingly vulnerable to audience drop-offs.
Hourly breakdown:
8PM – 1.2 rating, 3.44 million
9PM – 1.2 rating 3.60 million
10PM – 1.3 rating, 3.47 million