WWE Raw holds up for two hours before third hour drop, Canadian viewership

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Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/09/15/wwe-raw-holds-up-for-two-hours-before-drop-against-mnf/

The return of Monday Night Football and the absence of the NBA playoffs led to WWE Raw holding up for two hours before a decline in hour three.

Monday’s edition of WWE Raw averaged 1,689,000 viewers or a decline of 2.1 percent from last week. It was the show’s lowest viewership average since August 17th, however, it’s 0.50 rating in the 18-49 demo was up from last week’s 0.48.

The return of the NFL dominated the Monday night cable ratings with the earlier 7 pm Eastern game involving the Pittsburgh Steelers and NY Giants topping the list with 10.8 million viewers and a 3.62 in the 18-49 demo. The later game between Tennessee and Denver that began just after 10 pm averaged 7.7 million viewers and did a 2.92 demo number.

The NFL games were down 17.7 and 27.5 percent respectively from the 2019 Monday Night Football premieres. Year-to-year against MNF, viewership fell 25.7 percent and dropped 27.5 percent in the 18-49 rating.

In Canada, WWE Raw averaged 223,400 viewers (129,000 in the 25-54 demo) on Sportsnet 360 and was the fifth-most watched sports broadcast on Monday trailing the Dallas Stars vs. Las Vegas Golden Knights game, the two NFL games, and an episode of Hockey Central.

Monday’s episode of Raw began with 1,812,000 viewers and dropped 4 percent in the second hour to 1,734,000 and dropped another 12 percent in the third hour to 1,521,000. It was a decline of 16 percent from the start to the end of the show.

Raw performed consistently through the first two hours with minimal declines in hour two with the only notable one being adults over 50 that fell 7 percent.

The larger drop was felt in the third hour where males 18-49 and adults over 50 fell by 16 percent, males 12-34 and adults 25-54 dropped 15 percent, and the 18-49 figure fell 13.5 percent from the first hour.

Coming off a poor number last week, Raw had a bounce-back with adults 18-34 increasing by 26 percent this week, females 12-34 improved by 17 percent, and males 18-49 were up by 10 percent.

The trend of the show seems to bear out that there was interest in seeing the Steel Cage Match between Seth Rollins and Dominik Mysterio before the drop off in the third hour that featured the Drew McIntyre vs. Keith Lee main event.

It’s notable that the first two hours held up considering the 8-10 pm hours faced the larger NFL game.

Next week, Raw is set to go against both Monday Night Football and the Miami Heat vs. Boston Celtics game.

Here is a breakdown of the key demos:

Source: Showbuzz Daily

ADULTS 18-49
This week: 0.50 (+4 percent)
Hour 1-3: -13.5 percent

FEMALES 18-49
This week: 0.33 (-6 percent)
Hour 1-3: -9 percent

MALES 18-49
This week: 0.55 (+10 percent)
Hour 1-3: -16 percent

ADULTS 18-34
This week: 0.29 (+26 percent)
Hour 1-3: -13 percent

FEMALES 12-34
This week: 0.21 (+17 percent)
Hour 1-3: -5 percent

MALES 12-34
This week: 0.33 (+3 percent)
Hour 1-3: -15 percent

ADULTS 25-54
This week: 0.61 (+3 percent)
Hour 1-3: -15 percent

ADULTS 50+
This week: 0.82 (-2 percent)
Hour 1-3: -16 percent

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“WWE booked a show meant to compete with its head-to-head competition, so they don’t get credit for the stronger than expected number.”

I’m typically a Meltzer defender, but this is an asinine comment. Even when he is stating facts, his tone and what he chooses to emphasis when discussing WWE vs. when covering AEW are getting more and more biased by the week.

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I keep wondering are we really expecting Meltzer to be the only journalist in the world who doesn’t prefer one thing over another and then showing it in his articles?

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I think you are reading way to much into his post. He didn’t say anything that wasn’t fact.

Raw and NFL we’re down from a year ago - fact
Raw dropped more than MNF - fact
Ratings would have been worse without the cage match and title defenses - fact

John Pollocks write up was similar crediting the decent ratings to the interest in the cage match.

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Meltzer stating the show was loaded, which helped with ratings, is a matter of fact statement.

I don’t see anything editorial / opinionated about that post.

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I’ll concede that this may come off as an overreaction to this one comment. I just think it’s the latest in a trend where he skews things negatively for WWE as compared to his coverage of other companies.

“The ratings would’ve been worse if they put out a worse show” isn’t a necessary statement. For a guy who analyzes ratings as thoroughly as any journalist in any field, the concept of counter-programming shouldn’t be presented this way.

Maybe I just need to take my own advice and avoid Twitter Dave. I’m sure the Observer will be much more thorough than 280 characters.

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Totally fair. But what is skewing negative in that tweet?
It had stiff competition, that historically has done major damage to their rating. They loaded up the show to combat that. That’s really all that’s being said.

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You’re not wrong. People will sometimes dismiss this when you show a singular example, but if you look at the bigger picture, you definitely see this all over the place in 2020.

Just a few examples off the top of my head. I remember back when AEW and NXT were neck and neck in the ratings, when AEW won the majority of the headlines would be worded “AEW continues to roll on Wed nights” while when NXT won, the they seemed to be worded “NXT barely squeaks by with the ratings win”. I get it, a lot of journalists are fed up with WWE and when they write I dont think they can help but show their excitement when AEW wins and show their disappointment when NXT wins.

I think John is one of the best in the business at not doing this, I love that they always try to provide a fair assessment of what is going on, I can’t say the same for other journalists in this industry. A good example of this was back when the #speakingout movement started. John and Wai were so careful with what they said, they didnt blame the victim, they didnt crucify the accused. They simply reported the facts, and commented on the direction the differant companies were taking.

You see these types of biases all the time on cable news. I remember one of the worst cases I have ever seen was around during hurricane katrina. I remember watching the news and a white person was looking for food and the news captioned it as “man scavenging to feed his family” and then a similar situation took place with a black man, and it read “man looting grocery store” or something along those lines.

Not saying that these two examples are the same thing. Obviously confirmation bias regrading race on a mainstream platform is 1000x worse then a wrestling reporter talking about ratings. Not even in the same stratosphere. These are just two examples of headlines being written based on personal biases.

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Seems like I’m (almost) alone, so I’ll take the L on this one. But it still reads to me like he’s being dismissive of all of the good things WWE did to combat going up against MNF as “reasons the rating wasn’t worse”.

Appreciate the constructive, non-dick-ish feedback from all.

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