WWE's 10/28 Raw Rating Is A Bad Sign, But Not All Bad News

On Tuesday, the rating for this week's edition of WWE's Monday Night Raw caused a bit of a stir, as for the second time in three weeks, the third hour of the show dipped below 2 million total viewers. That news, in and of itself, is absolutely not good: WWE, while increasingly reliant on TV rights fees, is still more than a TV company, and as a result, dips in the total audience mean less viewers to parlay into paying customers of WWE Network, merchandise, and live event tickets. But since they are, in terms of revenue and profits, primarily a TV company, these recent numbers need to be looked at more deeply, if just because the key adults 18-49 demographic is what networks and advertisers focus on.

While the October 28th edition of Raw bottomed out pretty badly-1,928,000 viewers for hour three according to Show Buzz Daily-it was still the highest rated cable show in the demo all day Monday outside of Monday Night Football and it's pre-game/post-game shows. In the grand scheme of tings, WWE is still more or less bringing what USA Network is paying for. The actual worst sign is probably just how much the show lost viewers from start to finish: Hour one pulled in 2,326,000 total viewers, hour two netted 2,145,000, and hour three settled in at just 1,997,000. (The key demo ratings were, respectively, 0.79%, 0.72%, and 0.65%.) That's a 17.1% drop across the show in total viewers and the loss of viewers in the key demo was slightly worse, a 17.7% drop.

However, there's a positive to be taken out of these numbers: While the show two weeks ago dropped even more sharply on October 14th (2,521 total viewers and a 0.82% key demo rating in hour one to 1,997,000 total viewers and a 0.63% key demo rating in hour three, or 20.8% and 23.2% drops in total viewers and the key demo, respectively), hour three did show one small sign of life this week. While the total viewers were down 3.5% compared to the third hour two weeks ago, the key demo rating was up 3.2% relative to same. While the overall trend is concerning-especially Raw held up much better against Monday Night Football last week in terms of not losing as many viewers throughout the show-it could be a lot worse.

David Bixenspan is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, N.Y. He writes the Babyface v. Heel subscription blog/newsletter and co-hosts the Between The Sheets podcast every Monday at BetweenTheSheetsPod.com/everywhere else that podcasts are available. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidbix and view his portfolio at Clippings.me/davidbix.