Photo courtesy: WWE
The combination of no Major League Baseball and a drop for Monday Night Football saw a small increase for Raw from last week.
The three-hour show averaged 2,342,000 viewers on the USA Network, which represents an increase of 2.7%. A noticeable factor was Monday Night Football down 18% with this week’s game between the New England Patriots and New York Jets that averaged 10,839,000 viewers on ESPN.
Raw opened with 2,477,000 viewers featuring Ric Flair in the opening segment and continued the usual pattern of the first hour the most-watched of the three. The show fell 4% in the second hour to 2,373,000 and dropped another 8% in the last hour to 2,175,000 viewers. The show was built towards the reveal of The Street Profits’ mystery man, as Kevin Owens made his first appearance on Raw since being drafted from SmackDown.
Among the key demographics, Raw was steady among most with a 0.75 among people 18-49, which was up from a 0.74. The biggest increases were among males 18-34 (0.48 to 0.52 this week), females 12-34 (0.37 to 0.43) and males 12-34 (0.50 to 0.52).
It was clear that Monday’s show was about building for the future and planting the seeds that won’t grow overnight but patience could yield results. The key is patience and not being swayed by audience swings when you’re starting from ground zero with several performers, or worse, trying to erase past perceptions of characters not over as talent to take seriously.
This was Raw’s second-highest viewership since the beginning of September when Monday Night Football returned, trailing the season-premiere on September 30th.
From year-to-year, Raw was down 7.8% from this same week in 2018, which was the episode where Roman Reigns announced his leukemia had returned and relinquished the Universal championship.
