Monday’s episode of Raw saw an increase, despite the show airing on several hour tape delay from London, England and going against the Houston Rockets vs. Golden State Warriors playoff game.
This week’s Raw was up 2% with an average of 2,740,000 watching this week’s show on the USA Network from the O2 Arena in London.
The show opened with 2,903,000 viewers before experiencing a 7% drop to 2,692,000 viewers in the second hour. The show finished with 2,628,000 viewers for the final hour. Unlike most weeks, the big drop was from the first to the second hour as opposed to the regular drop in the third hour.
Raw also had their biggest NBA playoff competition this year with 8,820,000 people watching the Rockets vs. Warriors game at 9 pm on TNT. They also went against the entirety of the Las Vegas Golden Knights vs. Winnipeg Jets game, which did 1,240,000 viewers on NBC Sports Network.
Despite being up from last week, this was still the second lowest Raw number of 2018.
I’m going to use the Reigns hater logic for this one. …“When Monday Night Rollins became a tag line, the ratings dropped to their lowest… .don’t believe me? Who has had the longest segments and multiple segments every Raw since the Royal Rumble?”
What is a “normal” Raw as far as the ratings are concerned? Between Monday Night Football, the college football and basketball National Championship games, the NBA, NHL and MLB playoffs and various holiday weekends (Memorial Day, Labor Day and whatever else falls on a Monday in a given year), I feel like there’s always a reason to explain why Raw didn’t do well in a particular week.
To me, Raw is either a weekly TV show or it’s not. Or, maybe more appropriately, either ratings matter or they don’t.