Monday’s episode of RAW saw a plummet as it hit new lows for overall viewership and within the 18-49 demographic.
It was a bad week for RAW with enormous losses in two key demographics and a sign that the show had minimal interest from the start.
The show averaged 1,527,000 viewers and experienced a dramatic drop of 19.6 percent in the 18-49 demographic finishing with a 0.41 rating. Despite the massive drop, RAW still finished sixth among all cable programming Monday night.
RAW opened with 1,627,000 viewers, which would be the second-lowest first hour in the history of three-hour RAWs. The show dropped to 1,512,000 in hour two, and then to 1,441,000 in the final hour. The third-hour viewership average would be the lowest for any hour of RAW in the modern era that we have data for.
Last week’s episode of AEW Dynamite beat RAW overall in adults 18-49 (0.45 to 0.41), men 18-49 (0.57 to 0.46), adults 18-34 (0.29 to 0.22), women 12-34 (0.22 to 0.21), and adults 25-54 (0.49 to 0.48).
In total viewers, RAW declined by 12 percent this week and fell to the lowest overall average for the program. The previous low of the modern era occurred earlier this year with 1,561,000 viewers on July 13th.
While many will point to the Monday Night Football game between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns as RAW’s chief competition, the game averaged 12,422,000. The NFL was down 12.3 percent from the Buffalo vs. San Francisco game last week when factoring in the audience on both ABC and ESPN last week. There have been several larger NFL games this past season that didn’t cause RAW to fall to this level.
RAW was hit extremely hard in its male audience with men 18-49 declining by 31 percent this week and males 12-34 down by 25 percent. Adults 18-34 nosedived by 29 percent and adults 25-54 fell 25 percent.
While the 18-34 audience fell significantly, throughout the course of the show it remained consistent and only fell by 4.5 percent throughout the show. With males 12-34 it grew by 8 percent from the first hour to the third. The largest decline throughout the show was among women 12-34 that dropped 18 percent.
In Canada, RAW was not hit as bad finishing #3 among sports programming with 220,200 viewers and 112,900 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360. Last week, the show did 254,900 and 117,300 in the demo. This week, they trailed the NFL game and a Toronto Raptors pre-season game.
WWE got better news with the release of the final numbers for Friday Night SmackDown. The show finished with 2,206,000 viewers on Fox and a 0.6 in the 18-49 demographic. It was their best viewership mark since November 20th and was tied for first in the key demo with ABC’s Shark Tank among network programming. In Canada, SmackDown averaged 242,000 viewers on Sportsnet 360 with 119,800 in the 25-54 demographic.
Here is a breakdown of the key demos from RAW and we’ll include last week’s AEW Dynamite figures given how close the two were this week:
ADULTS 18-49
WWE Raw: 0.41 (-19.6 percent)
Hour 1-3: -14 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.45
FEMALES 18-49
WWE Raw: 0.36 (+3 percent)
Hour 1-3: -15 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.34
MALES 18-49
WWE Raw: 0.46 (-31 percent)
Hour 1-3: -10 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.57
ADULTS 18-34
WWE Raw: 0.22 (-29 percent)
Hour 1-3: -4.5 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.29
FEMALES 12-34
WWE Raw: 0.21 (-4.5 percent)
Hour 1-3: -18 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.22
MALES 12-34
WWE Raw: 0.27 (-25 percent)
Hour 1-3: +8 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.25
ADULTS 25-54
WWE Raw: 0.48 (-25 percent)
Hour 1-3: -12 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.49
ADULTS 50+
WWE Raw: 0.77 (-8 percent)
Hour 1-3: -9 percent
AEW Dynamite: 0.29
