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What's the story?
PWInsider is reporting on the ratings for this week's edition of Monday Night Raw, and they're not pretty. They lose over 300k viewers from the previous week to finish at 2.759 million.
In case you didn't know...
Though 2.759 million is a low viewership number for Raw, it is not the worst since the brand split last July. The September 26th edition of Raw in 2016 had only 2.478 million viewers, but they were up against some stiff competition with the US Presidential Debate.
The heart of the matter...
The highlights of this week's edition of Monday Night Raw included a great match between Cesaro and Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns cutting a promo celebrating his WWE Intercontinental Championship win the week before, and Braun Strowman returning to get revenge on Kane.
Last week's edition of Raw had 3.074 million viewers and had a lot of buzz surrounding the show after the return of Paige and the debuts of Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville. The only good news to come from this week's ratings is that the third hour didn't have as sharp of a drop-off as it normally does.
SmackDown Live suffered a similar sharp drop on the October 31st edition when only 2.119 million people tuned in, down from 2.699 million the week before.
What's next?
The WWE heads out west next week for Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live. Raw will take place at the famed Staples Center in Los Angeles, California; while SmackDown will air live from San Diego, California.
Author's take
I'm a little surprised at the sharp decline this week because the Monday Night Football game was by no means an intriguing match-up when the Baltimore Ravens took on the Houston Texans.
On top of that I thought the return of Paige would garner a lot of buzz, and while it may have around the internet, it didn't translate to the television ratings.
Considering this is typically a down period in the WWE until the Royal Rumble comes around at the end of January, it isn't surprising that there will be a dip in the ratings around this time of the year.
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