RAW dips down to worst TV audience in the show’s history
Monday Night RAW’s ratings have been on a steady decline for quite some time now. Last week, they hit a record low of 2.350 million viewers as the shows lowest audience in history. This week, they rebroke that record by dropping to a mere 2.302 million. Even more surprising was the drop in viewership for each hour in the show.
The three hours for RAW were:
- 8 p.m. 2.50 million viewers
- 9 p.m. 2.33 million viewers
- 10 p.m. 2.08 million viewers
That’s just under half a million that dropped from the first to third hour.
The third hour wasn’t just a regular main event segment either. It was a heavily advertised one, meant to help build a weakly built match at WWE Super Showdown in Australia (and likely will continue at WWE Crown Jewel in Saudi Arabia) that featured Undertaker, Kane, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels. These are 4 of the industry’s biggest legends living today. One of them who hasn’t performed in years, and is seemingly coming out of retirement.
Undertaker, Triple H, and Shawn Michaels were once a part of the main event for the all-time highest rated RAW in the show’s history, where Stone Cold Steve Austin teamed up with The Rock and Vince McMahon to take on Triple H, Undertaker and Shane McMahon, with Shawn Michaels as the special guest referee.
WWE try and bank on older wrestlers a lot these days, and it usually works out. Could it be that these performers are so clearly past there prime? Or is it that the storyline is so clearly forced solely for the sake of these big intercontinental events? Or is it both?
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer commented on the nostalgia factor that these 4 men were meant to capitalize on:
The second lesson of the day is the most basic in promotion of individual participant marketing sports. Nostalgia draws big, but has a short shelf life.
— Dave Meltzer (@davemeltzerWON) October 2, 2018
You can catch WWE Super Showdown on the WWE Network this Saturday, October 6th at 6 PM AEST, or 4 AM EST if you so desire.
Braden Jackson – @Dembrae
Image provided by WWE.com.