WWE: Raw Viewership Down 500K This Week

wwe-raw-logo The number of viewers that watch WWE Monday Night Raw every week doesn't really concern the average wrestling fan, but in a lot of ways it should. Why? Because USA Network and WWE care about those ratings quite a bit. They look at things like what hour was the best, what individuals consistently see increases in their segments and what they can do to make things better. This week's ratings were down from last week by an average of 500,000 viewers. That's a significant number. Prowrestling.net reports that the rating was a 3.15, down from the 3.24 last week. The overall viewer number for this week's show was 4.21 million. Hour one did 4.428 million viewers, hour two drew 4.2 million viewers and the final hour averaged 3.98 million viewers. While there are no immediate numbers for how many fans watch on TiVo or other DVR services, reported numbers in the past are anywhere from 10% to 15% could be added to those totals. That's why WWE can say it's about 5 million in the US. What can we gather from this info? Well, it can be said that a big reason why more people tuned in last week is because it was the night after a memorable (in a bad way to a lot of fans) Royal Rumble PPV while last night's show was just a regular episode of Raw. It's also never a good sign when the final hour of the show has nearly 500,000 less viewers than the first hour. Of course, there is a question as to what the cause of that would be. Should we blame the guys in the advertised main event (Orton and Bryan) or should we blame the rest of the show for not really being interesting? Because from my perspective, the show was pretty bad. I only kept watching because I write about it, but also due to the fact that I wanted to see a good main event even though it was a match we've seen many times before. It's important that WWE finds some consistency in their booking. Fans need to know what the direction is for WrestleMania so they can get invested in the storyline. It doesn't appear like we'll really know anything until after Elimination Chamber on February 23. Right now we know some of the top matches. Not much is going to change. That February 24 edition of Raw will be a huge night. There will likely be some big returns there (Undertaker is very likely) and maybe a surprise (Hulk Hogan?). With the WWE Network set to launch in America that night, you know that WWE is likely going to have something huge planned that week. For now, expect ratings to stay in a holding pattern and hope that WWE can produce some compelling TV in the meantime.
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John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.