WWE Raw ratings down nine percent from last week

The good news is that unlike last week, Raw did not have a substantial drop in viewers over the three hours.

The bad news is Raw didn’t start at anywhere the same level of interest. Last night’s episode was down nine percent overall from last week, averaging 2.21 million viewers, and the first hour week-to-week drop was 16 percent.

The good news is the audience actually rose slightly in the second hour, and the third hour fall wasn’t bad, with only a six percent first-to-third hour drop.

Raw was eighth on cable for the night, although it won in the 18-49 demo. It even beat both CBS and FOX in 18-49 last night, although CBS was all rerun programing and FOX was half rerun programming.

The drop from last year was a whopping 24 percent, but that’s misleading because last year’s show featured Roman Reigns’ return and giving his medical condition, and also featured a heavily promoted 70th birthday party for Ric Flair.

In particular, women held up well with an increase of eight percent in women 18-49 throughout the show, as opposed to usual strong drops, offsetting a 10 percent drop with men. Teenage girls in particular were up more than 40 percent from the first hour by hour three and teenage boys were relatively even.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.25 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.28 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.11 million viewers