Shane McMahon helps ratings stay strong for WWE RAW

Raw held up from last week’s stronger than usual numbers and remained the most watched show on cable last night.

WrestleMania season and the buzz from last week’s return of Shane McMahon led to a strong first hour.  There was a second hour drop, but the third hour, with the promise of revealing i HHH would face Dean Ambrose for the WWE title, was the second largest third hour since August, with very little drop from hour two. What’s notable is the third hour went 74 minutes, and usually a long overrun can hurt ratings because people don’t stay for the duration.

Raw did 3.71 million viewers, down just four percent from last weeks show which came the day after Fast Lane.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 3.95 million viewers
9 p.m. 3.66 million viewers
10 p.m. 3.55 million viewers

The second most watched show was the O’Reilly Factor on Fox News which did 3.56 million viewers.