10 Decisions That Helped Kill WWE Raw's Ratings
4. Switching To Three Hours
When Raw moved from the USA Network to TNN in 2000, the decision-makers at WWE prioritized the company's financial bottom line over TV ratings. There's nothing wrong with that in and of itself, but as a business strategy, it could have come back to haunt the company - after all, their future network negotiations are dependent on their recent TV performance.
In 2012, WWE agreed to a deal with similar effects. Starting with the 1000th episode of Raw, the show moved to a three hour format with each and every episode. Though most fans felt that WWE couldn't sustain that level of TV output, the company had a great incentive - USA, which wanted more of WWE's highly rated programming on the network, was paying the company an additional $50,000,000 a year for the extra hour.
The effect on ratings was immediate, if a bit misleading - numbers dropped, but again, wrestling fans are creatures of habit. It took a while for people to start tuning in at 8:00 every Monday, hurting the first hour and, by extension, the cumulative Raw number.
Eventually, Raw's start time was universally accepted, but three hours of WWE programming in a row has proven to be too much for fans. Often, there's a huge dip in viewership as the show goes on, even though the main event segment of Raw is ostensibly the most important.