The WWE Raw brand presented a show on Monday night that featured Braun Strowman emerging from a garbage truck in Baltimore eight days after being put in a garbage truck at TLC in Minneapolis because … WWE thinks their fans are idiots? I don’t know the reason exactly, but that’s what happened. In addition to that, two impromptu title matches and Stephanie McMahon also returned from a long hiatus to put the pressure on Kurt Angle to lead the Raw team to victory at Survivor Series.
In terms of the ratings, there was a drop this week compared to last week, but it’s not that bad. The drop was expected also because last week’s show following TLC benefited from following what ended up being a fun pay-per-view event. Last week also had the Smackdown invasion, which wasn’t advertised and wasn’t expected at all. It likely affected this week’s show because fans may have tuned in hoping to see Smackdown talent on Raw again. It didn’t happen aside from Smackdown’s General Manager Daniel Bryan getting wheeled away on a stretcher.
The numbers for this week’s Raw were 2.854 million viewers according to Showbuzz Daily. That’s down from the 2.953 million viewers from last week’s show and it’s much better than the 2.688 million viewers from two weeks earlier. Comparing to a show that didn’t follow a PPV is better, which shows that this week’s number was pretty solid.
The three hours of Raw followed the usual pattern broken down this way: 3.102 million in the first hour to lead the way, 2.943 million in hour two and the big drop in hour three with 2.517 million. I thought hour three was one of the worst hours of WWE television in a very long time, so I don’t blame people for tuning out. It’s a pretty significant number there with nearly 600,000 less viewers than the first hour.
There was also competition on cable TV from ESPN’s Monday Night Football, which did 10.420 million viewers. That’s a little down the norm because it was a boring game.
The Smackdown crew faces tough competition this week going up against game 6 of the World Series and it was Halloween night as well. It would be a surprise if their ratings don’t drop because of it.
