What’s the story?
According to a report from Cageside Seats, Raw ratings dropped again this week, but it wasn’t that bad.
In case you didn’t know...
Raw last week drew 3.11 million viewers on an average over the three-hour broadcast. That was down half a million viewers as opposed to the show that broadcast on the night after the 2017 Royal Rumble.
The heart of the matter
It would appear that WWE has found a groove now that they are deep on the road to WrestleMania. The drop between last week’s episode of Raw and the previous week’s episode was somewhat expected.
This week saw another drop, but it wasn’t nearly as significant of a drop in viewers. The episode of Raw that aired last night drew 3.07 million viewers, which is only a drop of around forty thousand viewers, or 0.04 million. When looking at the hour-by-hour numbers, they showed the normal pattern, but with less of a decline.
Hour one averaged 3.20 million viewers. Hour two averaged 3.15 million viewers, only losing about fifty thousand viewers from the first hour of the show. Hour three showed the usual drop as the show has become accustomed to, falling to 2.91 million viewers.
Comparing these numbers to the previous week’s numbers indicates some worrisome information, as well as a silver lining to the cloud of declining ratings. We have previously reported about the trend in declining ratings for Raw from hour one to hour three, and you can read that full article here.
The episode of Raw that aired on February 6th, averaged 3.11 million viewers with the following breakdown. The first hour pulled in 3.33 million viewers, whereas the second hour lost 170,000 viewers to 3.16 million. The third hour on that night averaged 2.84 million viewers.
While Raw had 133,000 fewer viewers from the beginning this week, they also lost fewer viewers over the course of the night, especially over the last hour. The third hour of Raw this week beat the third hour of Raw last week, which is something that doesn’t happen very often.
What’s next?
The next episode of Raw will air on February 20th, 2017 and will feature the fallout from the Festival of Friendship, as well as how Charlotte will react to losing her championship again.
Sportskeeda’s Take
This is a glass-half-full situation for the WWE as far as Raw is concerned. Not as many people tuned in, but not as many people tuned out either. They will have to hope that strong word of mouth from this show drives more viewers to tune in next week.
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