Raw ratings bounce back strong without football competition

As expected, Raw bounced back strong with no football competition, doing 3.26 million viewers on Monday night. That’s only down six percent from the 3.46 million viewers that the bounce-back Raw the same week last year did, so the decline is far less than it was during football season.

It was up 13 percent from last week, and the usual goal is a ten percent increase the first week after football season ends.

Raw was also going against the NBA’s two premiere teams against each other, a Warriors vs. Cavaliers game on TNT, which did 4.52 million viewers. Overall Raw was fifth for the night on cable.

The story was a very strong open and a big fade. Whether that was attributable to the idea that people were curious to see Brock Lesnar, and after his appearance, there was nothing plugged for him later, or they just lost interest after the first hour, the ratings pattern wasn’t good.

In the 18-49 demo, the first to third hour drop was 14 percent among women and 10 percent among men, so it was a uniform drop, not like the usual mostly female drops as the show goes on. The only group that stuck strongly with the show was teenage boys.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.52 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.22 million viewers
10 p.m. 3.07 million viewers