Monday’s episode of WWE Raw promoted around the Unsanctioned Match between Randy Orton and Big Show coming off Extreme Rules did not amount to much improvement.
Despite a much-talked-about pay-per-view on Sunday and the promotion of the Unsanctioned Match, viewership only increased by 4.3% with 1,628,000 viewers watching on the USA Network – the show’s second-lowest in history behind last week’s average.
The show averaged a 0.46 rating in the 18-49 demographic, which is down 4.2% and ties Raw’s lowest rating in the demo with the episode from May 4th this year. This week’s show finished 3rd, 6th, and 7th among cable programming for the evening.
The show started off with more interest this week, averaging 1,740,000 viewers in the first hour and was 10% higher than last week’s first hour. From there, the show fell 7.5% in the second hour to 1,609,000 viewers and dropped another 4.5% to 1,535,000 for the closing hour that featured Orton vs. Big Show.
There were three demographics that took a major hit this week. Adults 18-34 fell by 31% followed by females 12-34 dropping by 30%, and males 12-34 down by 25%. The rest of the demos lost between 3-7%, except adults over 50 that improved by 8% this week.
There were enormous losses in the third hour despite the heavy promotion of both Orton vs. Show, and the Bayley vs Kairi Sane matches. In the third hour, adults 18-34 fell by 31% compared to the first hour, females 12-34 dropped by 28%, and males 12-34 were down by 27.5% in the closing hour.
The audience that stuck around for the whole show were adults over 50, which only dropped by 2.5% in the third hour. Every other group had double-digit declines in the closing hour.
Thus far, the strategy of putting big matches on television with a week of promotion has not produced results. This past Friday, SmackDown did 1,912,000 viewers for a show featuring AJ Styles vs. Matt Riddle for the Intercontinental title. It was up 12,000 viewers from the previous week but still ranks as the fourth-lowest episode of the series on Fox.
Next week’s episode of Raw is set to feature two title matches with Drew McIntyre vs. Dolph Ziggler in a stipulation match for the WWE title, and Asuka vs. Sasha Banks to determine the Raw women’s champion.
Here is a breakdown of the key demographics from Raw:
ADULTS 18-49
This week: 0.46 (-4.2%)
Hour 1-3: -18%
FEMALES 18-49
This week: 0.32 (-3%)
Hour 1-3: -24%
MALES 18-49
This week: 0.60 (-5%)
Hour 1-3: -14%
ADULTS 18-34
This week: 0.20 (-31%)
Hour 1-3: -31%
FEMALES 12-34
This week: 0.14 (-30%)
Hour 1-3: -28%
MALES 12-34
This week: 0.24 (-25%)
Hour 1-3: -27.5%
ADULTS 25-54
This week: 0.58 (-6.5%)
Hour 1-3: -11%
ADULTS 50+
This week: 0.80 (+8%)
Hour 1-3: -2.5%
