10 Most Significant Reasons For WWE Raw's Low Ratings

6. Chris Benoit's Legacy

The rating for this past Monday night€™s RAW isn€™t a new phenomenon. In fact, Nielsen ratings for RAW have been more or less in the same range for many years now, and only on rare occasions to those ratings get exceptionally high or low. The general trend, however, is that ratings are decreasing overall, especially since this isn€™t the WrestleMania season. So why doesn€™t RAW€™s rating ever reach previous highs? One of the biggest reasons for that is because wrestling€™s image has been seriously tarnished following the Chris Benoit incident. WWE had a hard enough time establishing itself as a major form of entertainment before those events took place, but with headlines like €˜wrestler murders wife and son, then kills self€™, it made things considerably worse for both the pro wrestling business and its fans. Prior to this happening, WWE was still doing quite well in terms of popularity and appeal, but the notion of supporting a company that had one of their employees commit such unspeakable crimes was simply too much for many people, especially considering that, even with a TV-14 target market, many younger children watched the show. While RAW has enjoyed a few spikes in viewership, the overall Nielsen ratings have been falling for many years, as part of a greater trend that sees wrestling become less popular than it once was. That trend received a lot of momentum when the Benoit tragedy took place, and soon wrestling wasn€™t as €˜cool€™ as before. As long as that perception exists, WWE will keep having serious ratings problems.