WWE Raw finishes #5 on cable, 18-49 grows in third hour

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2021/12/01/wwe-raw-finishes-5-on-cable-18-49-grows-in-third-hour/

WWE Raw finished fifth among cable originals on Monday with a small drop in its demo figures while experiencing third-hour growth.

The November 29th edition of the show from Long Island at the UBS Arena averaged 1,678,000 viewers and 593,000 (0.45) in the 18-49 demographic with data from Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics and Showbuzz Daily.

Their audience was down a mere 1 percent with the 18-49 audience dropping 7 percent from the week prior. The show suffered its highest decline with Males 18-49 dropping 9 percent while females in the same age range dropped by 7 percent.

Raw was fifth for the night on cable against the Monday Night Football game between Seattle and Washington that averaged 10,894,000 viewers and 3.08 in 18-49 that topped television for the night.

Raw opened with 1,679,000 viewers and 0.43 in the 18-49 demo for the first hour, then grew to 1,763,000 and 0.49 in the second hour before falling to 1,594,000 and 0.45 in the third hour that included the main event between Big E. and Kevin Owens with Seth Rollins on commentary and implications for the WWE Championship match at the Day 1 event on January 1st.

WWE avoided the trend of a third-hour decline across the board. While its overall audience fell 5 percent throughout the show (mainly from its 50+ demo decreasing by 10 percent to pull that number down), Raw’s Male 18-49 and Adult 18-34 demos increased by 5 and 17 percent respectively throughout the episode.

Males 18-49 grew by 17 percent throughout the episode while females in the demo dropped by 13 percent. In 12-34, males grew by 28.5 percent while the female audience in that demo was even with a spike in hour two and doing an equal rating in hours one and three.

Throughout the month of November, WWE Raw averaged 1,640,000 viewers and 583,000 in 18-49 over five episodes.

In Canada, Raw averaged 144,500 viewers and 67,000 in 25-54 on Sportsnet 360, which represented drops of 21.5 and 12 percent respectively from the week prior.

One day we’ll wake and see Raw has dipped below 1M (current trend indicates it’s headed that way at some point in coming quarters) and it will be between 7-12 in the ranking.

And then there will be real questions asked at a network paying $5M a week for less and less ROI year after year.

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@johnpollock How do advertisers evaluate the Raw rating? Do they evaluate each hour as its own entity? Or do they evaluate the show as whole? So for example, if the third hour drags the average viewers down, will that effect the advertising rates of the first hour?