11/9 Raw TV Ratings – Raw falls again, hits viewership low

Monday’s Raw TV ratings fell again despite the show representing a “starting over” point following Seth Rollins’s major knee injury, which created a vacancy in the WWE Title picture. Raw also hit viewership low points…

WWE Raw TV Ratings

— November 9: Raw scored a 2.23 rating, down one-tenth from a 2.32 rating last week. Raw was also down two-tenths from a 2.46 rating two weeks ago for the post-HIAC episode.

Despite the overall rating declining, Raw was up one-tenth of a rating in their key male demos compared to last week. ESPN’s Monday Night Football drew a standard audience, but WWE may have lost viewers outside of adults & males 18-49 with a big wrestling market like Chicago represented on MNF.

What appears to have contributed to the overall rating declining can be found in the hourly viewership.

– Raw averaged 3.173 million viewers, down 2.3 percent from last week’s year-low 3.248 million viewers. The latest historical low-point for Raw included the following hourly break down:

3.480 million first hour viewers (up from last week, showing initial intrigue for the Seth Rollins news & WWE Title tournament set-up).
3.177 million second hour viewers (another sharp second hour decline in October and November).
2.863 million third hour viewers, easily the least-watched hour of a standard Raw in two decades. It was the first time an hour of Raw drew fewer than three million viewers since Christmas Eve 2012 when the first hour drew 2.940 million viewers.

Within the third hour, there is additional demographic info on what contributed to the sharp decline. Adult males held up, while all other portions of the audience fell more than usual…

Males 18-49: 1.57 rating essentially unchanged a 1.56 third hour rating.
Women 18-49: 0.67 fell to a 0.57 rating
Women 25-54: 0.74 fell to a 0.59 rating
Teenagers: 1.18 fell to a 1.00 rating
Kids 2-11 watching with their parents: 0.56 fell to a 0.40 rating

Caldwell’s Analysis: The third hour tells a few stories (outside of the weekly conclusion that Raw is too long). First, WWE did not strongly promote a key tournament match occurring in the final hour. Instead, the default main event was a six-man tag match leading into the final quarter-hour.

The final segment was built around another Wyatt Family promo, which is not a strong-enough hook to stay up late to watch when the promos have become tired or non-sensical. We don’t have the over-run numbers, but it appears that not enough casual/irregular viewers were aware of the surprise of The Undertaker and Kane returning in that final segment, which was taped a few hours earlier in the U.K. So, the conclusion is the audience did not know to stick around for the big ending.

It appears there was early intrigue in the Seth Rollins update and WWE Title tournament announcement, but the audience tapered off as the show went on. This week, the drop-off from the first to third hour was very pronounced – a 17 percent decline.