June 5, 2017 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Record low Raw ratings, death of Frank Deford, more

With Raw on Memorial Day doing the second lowest rating in the history of the show, and that includes holidays and shows during football season, on a week when all signs were that there should logically have been a strong bounce back, it asks a ton of questions.

Before people start making excuses about cord cutting, cord cutting can’t effect ratings more than one or two percent. The rating is derived by the percentage of homes that get the station, in this case the USA Network. If people no longer get USA Network, they aren’t figured into the percentage. You can argue that wrestling fans are cutting the cord, a term that is almost a joke the way it’s overused, greater than the public at large, but even then that’s a joke.

One year ago, USA Network was in 92.7 million homes. This past week USA Network was in 91.8 million homes. Yes, it is down and cord cutting probably is fair to account for maybe a one percent decline in audience and a zero percent decline in ratings, since those 900,000 homes aren’t figured in to begin with on the ratings. 

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