Wedding draws WWE Raw's highest viewership in three months

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2019/12/31/wedding-draws-wwe-raws-highest-viewership-in-three-months/

The final episode of WWE Raw for 2019 and the decade saw a big increase as the show was built around the wedding involving Bobby Lashley and Lana.

The show averaged 2,433,000 viewers that included a ten-minute overrun for the conclusion of the wedding with Liv Morgan confronting Lana.

It was Raw’s highest viewership in three months since September 30th for the ‘season-premiere’ that included appearances from Brock Lesnar, Ric Flair, and Hulk Hogan.

The show opened with 2,525,000 viewers with the second hour doing 2,464,000 and the final 70 minutes of the show averaging 2,328,000. Each hour was Raw’s best performance since the September 30th show.

Their main sports competition came from the Orange Bowl with 6,067,000 watching the game and no more NFL competition until the fall.

Due to last week’s show being taped, I compared the demos with the show from two weeks ago for a more accurate comparison.

Adults 18-49 did very well with a 0.77, up 28% from two weeks ago. Males 18-49 did huge with a 1.0 in the demo up 33% from two weeks ago and both males 12-34 and adults 25-54 increased 29% from the December 16th show.

From hour one to hour three, the biggest decline was males 12-34 which fell 16% followed my males 18-49 dropping 14%. The 18-49 demo was down 10% from the first hour to the last.

The success of this week’s viewership should be attributed to the wedding segment as the key draw on the show along with the benefit of not having Monday Night Football competition.

Here are the breakdowns of the key demos with comparisons to both the December 16th episode and the taped December 23rd edition:

PEOPLE 18-49:
0.77
Two weeks ago: +28%
Hour 1-3: -10%

FEMALES 18-49:
0.54
Two weeks ago: +20%
Hour 1-3: -2%

MALES 18-49:
1.00
Two weeks ago: +33%
Hour 1-3: -14%

PEOPLE 18-34:
0.53
Two weeks ago: +26%
Hour 1-3: -12%

FEMALES 12-34:

0.34
Two weeks ago: +3%
Hour 1-3: +3%

MALES 12-34:
0.63
Two weeks ago: +29%
Hour 1-3: -16%

PEOPLE 25-54:
0.93
Two weeks ago: +29%
Hour 1-3: -7%

PEOPLE 50+:
1.09
Two weeks ago: +13.5%
Hour 1-3: -6%

I hate this. But maybe we are the minority. Why this crap gets rewarded with good ratings and furthers this company’s feeling that this is what people want is beyond me. But maybe it is what people want :man_shrugging:

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I think you hit it on the head. This is what the public wants.

Meltzer talked about this when the whole FS1 decable on Smackdown happened. They switched a channel they advertised in advance and ratings plummeted. (Including the show before)

Basically the average WWE fan was either too stupid to remember or know how to switch to FS1. Or they just didn’t care to reach for the remote. Either way it made no sense to drop that far and lost almost 1.5million viewers.

The average WWE fan is well over 50 and likes corny humour like Vince does. They are more like him than they are like us. So they love this stuff if he loves it.

I think people love to hate too. I would agree with Bryan Alvarez, it was supposed to be really bad so that people would watch it and then bitch about it on twitter because it feels good to complain.

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I think there’s something to that. I haven’t watched much wrestling at all this year, but I went out of my way to watch that wedding segment after hearing John & Wai’s recap of it.

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What’s really sickening is the amount of views the clip has on YouTube.

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I keep saying it, people always talk about the in ring product and 5 or 6 star matches and that is not what people want. Every time I record Raw and Smackdown, it’s very rare that I will watch a match in full. I mostly fast forward to the end. TV matches mean shit in WWE and you can find good wrestling anywhere.

I watch the angles and the promos always, no matter how bad they are, because they are either really good or train wrecks we can laugh at.

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Hilarious. Reinforces Vinnie’s belief that this shit is ratings gold.

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The only thing that matters will be if they ever actually do enough dumb shit to drive away the die-hard, lifelong wrestling fans who will always comprise the “base”… the ones who doesn’t come and go over time like kids who grow out of it or older folks who won’t seek out FS1 or buy the Network.

Unless that happens, whatever drives the ratings at the moment will always dictate the direction of the product.

I think part of the ratings being up is no NFL. That probably has more to do with this rating than the content does. I think people that watch now don’t tune out unless there is something else to watch.

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The more something gets talked about, the more people will want to see what happened. It’s especially true if it’s some type of fuck up or some type of trashy segment. If that’s the type of easy attention WWE want then it will work. A bra and panties match between Lana and Liv Morgan will get more views than a great match and great storyline between two great workers.

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Agree.

Bra and panties with Lana and Liv will get more views than a Becky va Asuka classic

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This is just so disappointing…you think people want quality matches and angles, but the big ratings draw is this?

That’s where the hate watch argument holds water. Boggles my mind, but I just gotta admit that’s what WWE fans want. We all probably considers ourselves Wrestling fans, at least I do, not a WWE fan

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They routinely fail upwards due to circumstances like this. If it’s a strategy to feed into their group think because it’s what they wanna produce then kudos to them for knowing when to pull the card understanding they’d likely have a bounce from no NFL and get to credit a shit segment that vince wanted

You say that but it did 1.0 in males 18-49. That is huge.

Wedding always draw so it’s no surprise. But they can only do a wedding so often. Also no NFL helps a lot.

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Why do we even get drawn into caring about the ratings? First week without NFL is huge… literally 10+ million new viewers were available and most other prime time shows are in reruns. Plus, a higher than normal amount of people didn’t have work in the morning. Also, if next week’s number is down, is it because there’s no wedding or because people watched last week and then decided not to watch this week because last week sucked?

As fans, our interest in the ratings should probably start and end with “is the show going to change or get cancelled?” Otherwise, my New Year’s Resolution is to stop giving a shit about them. They’re numbers for networks, advertisers, business analysts and stockholders, not for the majority.

I think the concern in this case is that it will somehow send WWE the message that crap like Monday is what draws ratings, and that will continue to be what we get.

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Seems like TV-PG is a non-negotiable part of the deal (at least for USA Network) based on what I’ve read. Will be interesting to see how far into recalling the most embarrassing parts of the Attitude Era they can go.