WWE Raw Ratings Crisis - Scores Lowest Non-Holiday Number Since 1997

After an action-packed WWE Night of Champions on Sunday night, the WWE Monday Night Raw fallout show the following night failed to attract enough interest to compete with the competition. The show represents the lowest audience for Raw, aside from a July 4th or Christmas or New Year Eve show, dating back to 1997. This has been a major disappointment for WWE, with the eighteen year low setting off alarm bells in company headquarters. A mixture of football competition and modern day viewing habits are proving a real challenge. The first hour of WWE Raw at 8pm brought in 3,420,000 viewers. Viewership dropped in the second hour to 3,368,000 and continued to fall in the 10pm hour to 3,260,000 viewers. The viewership for that final hour of Raw is also the lowest ever for the 10pm hour since the weekly TV show switched from 2 to 3 hours. So, what happened? Post-PPV Raw's generally pull in good ratings from both fans who watched the PPV and those tuning in to find out what they missed. The Night of Champions PPV the night before seemed to generate mostly positive reviews from fans. Did the return of Kane at the end of Sunday's event fail to generate enough interest to make people tune in the following night to see what would happen next? With ratings continue to drop leading into Monday night's main event, were viewers just tired of yet another match-up between Seth Rollins and John Cena?

What is likely to take most of the blame, at least from those working at Titan Towers, is the night's television competition. With football season now in full swing in the United States, WWE has to work harder for those eyeballs. Monday Night Football had 12,479,000 viewers last night.