Raw Ratings: Rebound to slightly above ten-week rolling average for post-TLC episode with hype of a Vince McMahon shake-up

PWTorch editor Wade Keller presents a special Thursday Flagship edition of the Wade Keller Pro Wrestling Podcast featuring a WrestleMania 36 Preview with ex-WWE Creative Team member and professional stand-up comedian Matt McCarthy.

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WWE Monday Night Raw last night (12/17) on USA Network drew a 1.74 rating, up from the record low 1.58 last week and even above the ten-week rolling average headed into this week of 1.68.

The show opened with 2.717 million viewers, the highest since Nov. 19 and in line with the average since September 3. It dropped each hour to 2.558 in the second hour and 2.367 in the third hour. The drop-off of 350,000 viewers is typical for Raw; the average this year is a 321,000 drop-off from the first-to-third hour.

This gets Raw back into a less panic-inducing ratings level, perhaps, but it took an episode featuring days of hype by WWE on their various platforms including WWE.com, social media, and WWE Network advertising the return of Vince McMahon with a big “shake-up.” It also came the day after an eventful TLC PPV event.

The next two weeks, Raw falls on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, so ratings will likely be way down and not really comparable in any fair way to recent episodes. That means, the first Raw episode in January 2019 is a new starting point as WWE enters its peak season from Royal Rumble hype through WrestleMania fallout and the Superstar Shake-up from January through April. The promises of new stars, new opportunities, and other changes in coming weeks might be enough to give disgruntled fans a reason to check back in at the start of the new year.

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