WWE Raw Maintains Strong Viewership Following Royal Rumble

Coming on the heels of WWE's ratings success last week with the special 30th-anniversary episode of "WWE Raw," the numbers for last night's post-Royal Rumble edition of the show continued a string of positive news for the company. 

According to reporting from both Wrestlenomics and ShowBuzzDaily, the January 30 episode averaged 2,114,000 viewers across all demographics across its three hours, with approximately 831,000 of the viewers being in the adults aged 18-49 demographic, the demo valued most by advertisers. The latter number translated to a 0.64 rating in the key demo.

According to ShowBuzzDaily's rankings, "Raw" was the top-rated show in the key demo among cable originals on Monday, and that 0.64 key demo rating also beat out everything in the broadcast networks' primetime lineups for the night. Among those broadcast network shows, "The Bachelor" on ABC did the best of the English language networks with a 0.59 rating in the key demo; the actual biggest key demo number on the over-the-air networks was a 0.62 for "El Señor de los Cielos 8" on Telemundo.

Hour by hour, "Raw" saw its usual viewership decline as the show went on. The first hour averaged 2,219,000 total viewers with a 0.66 rating in the key demo, hour two averaged 2,168,000 viewers with a 0.65 key demo rating, and hour three averaged 1,955,000 viewers across all demos with its key demo rating dropping to 0.60. Compared to last week's "Raw XXX," which drew the biggest numbers in about three years, the January 30 show was down 10% in total viewership and 8% in the key demo. 

Next week's show may end up being the most telling for where things are heading for WWE programming ratings-wise. "Raw XXX" is something of an anomaly and the post-Rumble show always does particularly well. However, if the February 6 show stays noticeably above pre-"Raw XXX" levels, it could be indicative of a larger trend, one buoyed by the end of football season and the build toward WrestleMania.