WWE RAW Ratings Slump Again: Another 18 Year Low

Just when you think that things can't possibly get worse for WWE RAW's television ratings, the show has hit yet another 18 year low when it comes to viewership numbers. The 11/9 edition of RAW from Manchester, which was centered around the beginning of the WWE World Heavyweight Title Tournament, averaged 3.17 million viewers (RAW averaged 3.25 million viewers last week). This is only marginally better than the 3.14 million viewers that a Christmas Eve episode of RAW in 2012 did, which is still the least viewed RAW since the show moved to 3 hours. This week's show now holds the record for the least viewed non-holiday edition of RAW since moving to 3 hours. The hourly breakdown for this week's RAW was 3.480 million viewers during the first hour, 3.177 million viewers for the second hour, and a disastrous 2.863 million viewers. The trend of the audience tuning out throughout the three hour show has been written about at length in the past, and that trend continued this week. However, the third hour falling below three million viewers was a new low for the show.

WWE went into Monday night with a good amount of fan interest in how the company would handle the fallout from Seth Rollins' knee injury in Dublin last week. Much of that excitement was quickly put to rest when Roman Reigns wrestled Big Show in a match that went almost 15 minutes to open the show. After these two had wrestled several times in the recent past, one would think that WWE would have Reigns get a dominant victory over Show to start the tournament off with a bang and give Reigns momentum. Instead, Reigns engaged in a back and forth match, even selling a bear hug from Show at one point. The tournament bracket itself was lacking any major surprises or intrigue, and the outcomes of the matches were largely predictable before any of them had even occurred. With the show losing over 600,000 viewers from start to finish, it's evident that the audience was far from intrigued with the potential tournament match-ups. The final cable broadcast rating for RAW came in at a 2.23. This was also a decrease compared to last week's show which drew a 2.32 cable rating.