WWE Raw ratings way up despite Rousey & Lesnar not appearing

[Big Red Machine]

Source: www.F4WOnline.com

By Paul Fontaine | @PaulAceFontaine | Mar 13, 2018 1:35 pm


Last night's Raw increased nine percent over last week in the ratings and did the best number since the post-Royal Rumble episode, averaging 3.35 million viewers.

What's noticeable is that despite the fact that there was no real advertised main event, the third hour held up much better than usual. It was the highest rated third hour since the Monday after WrestleMania last year.

The show opened with 3.351 million viewers for hour one and increased to 3.429 million viewers for the second hour. This was the first week of Daylight Savings Time, and the second hour has traditionally been the highest rated in recent years once DST kicks in. The third hour only dropped to 3.275 million, which was just 2.3 percent down from hour one, the best such audience retention since July of last year.

It's possible that people were expecting either Ronda Rousey or Brock Lesnar to make a late appearance since both were advertised for the show, but it was made very clear early on that Lesnar wasn't there. As for Rousey, they were promising a recap of her angle from recent weeks, but the announcers never said she'd be there.

Another notable aspect is that the overrun only ran three minutes -- as opposed to most weeks where it is anywhere from seven to 15 minutes. It's possible that more of their audience is leaving during that overrun than is realized.

Raw finished first on cable in terms of total viewers by a significant margin, beating the second place show by almost 200,000 viewers. The three hours were also the top three in all of cable in terms of the 18-49 demo, averaging 1.16 over the entire broadcast.