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What's the Story?
The downward trend for Monday Night Raw's ratings continue as the first Raw of October managed to lose more viewers than last week's show.
The October 1 edition of Raw averaged 2.3 million viewers; down 350,000 from the previous week.
In Case You Didn't Know...
Dean Ambrose started the show talking about the tension developing in The Shield which lead to a match against Braun Strowman.
Other notable moments from the show were Roman Reigns vs. Dolph Ziggler, Seth Rollins vs. Drew McIntyre, the duet of Elias and Kevin Owens and the return of Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker and Kane.
The Heart of the Matter
Raw focused heavily on the in-ring action for this week's show; almost as a response to their low rating from the previous week.
Despite the shift in focus, the show was unable to break the top 5 for Monday Night Cable losing out to NFL-related programming from ESPN and Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood on VH1.
The following is the hourly breakdown of this week's Raw episode:
Hour one: 2.500 million
Hour two: 2.325 million
Hour three: 2.081 million
The first hour of Raw managed to bring in more viewers than the previous week, but the viewership fell by over 400,000 heading into the third hour, which featured Bobby Lashley vs. Kevin Owens, Bayley vs. Alicia Fox and The Brothers of Destruction attacking D-Generation X.
What's Next?
Viewership usually rebounds after a pay-per-view, but Raw has rarely had ratings this low to come back from when a major show is scheduled.
Next week's NFL game will feature the Washington Redskins and the New Orleans Saints and could take an even bigger portion of Raw's viewership than this week's game did.
Author's Take
The severe decline from this week's show might be a telling sign of the level of interest fans in the US have in the program between Triple H and The Undertaker, but that is pure speculation.
As we draw closer to the holidays, there's a strong chance WWE's ratings will get much worse.
