WWE Monday Night RAW Rating Second Lowest In History, Only One WCW Nitro Rating Was Lower, More

This past Monday's episode of RAW on Memorial Day averaged 2.613 million viewers and was the least watched episode of the year. The final rating of the show was just a 1.75.

Dave Meltzer reported in The Wrestling Observer Newsletter that it was the second lowest rated episode in the history of the show. He also noted that only one episode of WCW Monday Nitro, the December 11, 2000 show, ever did lower than a 1.75.

The rating is based on the percentage of homes that get the USA Network, so cord cutting doesn't factor into the rating. It was also noted in the Observer that the USA Network is available in 91.8 million homes, while it was available in 92.7 million homes a year ago, a drop of 1%. This year's RAW rating was down 19.1% from last year's Memorial Day episode, which scored a 2.19 rating with 3.222 million viewers.

Alfred Konuwa's latest blog at Forbes also looks at RAW's declining viewership. It noted that the last Memorial Day RAW in 2012 before the show moved to three hours averaged 3.91 million viewers. The first Memorial Day RAW after moving to three hours in 2013 actually was up from the prior year with 3.99 million viewers. While viewership for the Memorial Day RAW had dropped around 10% each year since then except from 2014 to 2015 (both of those episodes averaged 3.6 million viewers), the drop from 2016 to this year was by far the biggest at 19%.

"WWE moved to a three-hour format in 2012, and since then, viewership totals have seen year-to-year dropoffs," Konuwa wrote. "Raw's negative ratings pattern since moving to three hours indicates viewer burnout, and it just might be time for the promotion to consider moving back to two hours."

Source: Wrestling Observer Newsletter

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