Monday night's episode of RAW featured some fun matches and semi-memorable moments but it probably won't surprise you to learn that ratings took a hit for the underwhelming instalment of WWE's flagship show. In total, it managed to draw 2,663,000 viewers, a pretty significant drop from last week's 2,903,000 viewers. To be fair, though, there wasn't really that much advertised beforehand.
Hour one averaged 2,597,000 viewers, hour two drew 2,679,000 viewers, and the final hour of the show averaged 2,714,000 viewers. The numbers increasing like this is actually surprising and there's no real explanation beyond viewers not being that interested in what was happening until the Seth Rollins vs. Dolph Ziggler main event took place (the former has been carrying the show for a while).
As Dave Meltzer points out, "What this means is there was lower than usual level of interest in the show, however, the show itself was good, in fact by current standards when it comes to keeping the audience, it was the best in a year. This caused the usual viewership tune-out not to happen. The idea of a nearly 30-minute main event was a huge ratings success."
Pretty interesting, right? It'll be well worth seeing how WWE responds to this next Monday, that's for sure.