How Did Daniel Bryan's Retirement Affect WWE RAW Ratings?

The WWE RAW television ratings this week came in telling an interesting story. Although the viewership was up as compared to last week's broadcast, the show still experienced a drop in viewers during the best segment of the show. RAW averaged 3.727 million viewers on February 8th, which was an increase of 344,000 viewers versus last week's RAW broadcast. Last week's show averaged 3.383 million viewers. The hourly breakdown this week was as follows:

First Hour: 3.907 million viewers Second Hour: 3.905 million viewers Third Hour: 3.368 million viewers

What's interesting when examining the viewership is that the show's rating probably popped due to the Daniel Bryan retirement announcement ahead of time, but over 500,000 viewers tuned out before Bryan's segment even aired. RAW experienced a steep drop-off in viewership from hour two to hour three, the same trend the show has experienced for many months. The Bryan segment actually aired in what was the fourth hour of the show, due to a long overrun on Monday night, but the viewership numbers for that fourth hour are indeed factored into the third hour viewership average above (the least viewed hour of the show). When examining the viewership data, the third hour was listed with a running time of 86 minutes. RAW finished the night as the most watched show on cable television. It narrowly beat out the O'Reilly Factor on FOX News, which drew 3.683 million viewers.