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From bad to worse … Alarm bells went off when the numbers for the September 24 edition of Raw were received at WWE Headquarters. The average Nielsen rating was 1.64, a shocking number for a non-holiday episode. It was, in fact, lower than last year’s Christmas night show. The October 1 edition dropped further to, 1.63, the equivalent of only 2.3 million viewers—a frightening trend.
How bad are these numbers really? In the historical sense, horrific. Going back over 20 years, to before the Monday Night War, Raw was consistently ranked among cable’s top 15 programs, averaging about 3.2, which was the rough equivalent of three-million households at the time.
It might be more depressing to examine figures during the very good times. When ended 83-week winning streak by teasing a Steve Austin-Vince McMahon match on April 13, 1998, scored 4.6, compared to 4.3. Think about numbers increased during the Attitude Era (peaking for the Owen Hart tribute show with a 7.1 rating—the equivalent of 5.25 million households!). An overlooked fact is that Triple-H-dominated episodes of 2000 and 2001 often pulled average numbers between 6.5 and 7.0, higher than most “Stone-Cold”-dominated of the Attitude Era.
