Source: www.F4WOnline.com

By Dave Meltzer | @davemeltzerWON | Oct 4, 2016 1:45 pm

Raw last night, built around the Sasha Banks Women's title win over Charlotte, did its best numbers since the NFL season began.

While 2.79 million viewers during football season would have been viewed badly if you said that's where things would be one month ago, it solidly beat the 2.68 million number of the first two weeks of football season and last week's low point of 2.46 million viewers going against the presidential debate.

The audience did drop in the third hour, which was at the same range of the show two weeks ago. Since last week's rating really should be thrown out because of the unusual circumstances, as compared to two weeks ago, the first two hours were up, which made the difference.

Also encouraging is that it did a better number against the most-watched Monday Night Football game of the season, as the New York Giants vs. Minnesota Vikings game did 13.16 million viewers, and New York market teams usually hurt Raw ratings more than teams from any other city.

Raw was fourth for the night on cable, training the football game, SportsCenter after football and The O'Reilly Factor.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.88 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.87 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.64 million viewer

I've always thought wrestling ratings were fickle and not how one should judge the quality of the show. There are too many uncontrollable factors, and you can't put title matches on every Raw without really screwing things up, so what do you do?

NWK2000 wrote:I've always thought wrestling ratings were fickle and not how one should judge the quality of the show. There are too many uncontrollable factors, and you can't put title matches on every Raw without really screwing things up, so what do you do?

Make the TV more episodic, which will create more interest in people tuning in to see what will happen next week. Also, hyping up matches a week in advance doesn't hurt. Kendrick vs. Perkins also felt big even though it wasn't a title match.

Big Red Machine wrote:

NWK2000 wrote:I've always thought wrestling ratings were fickle and not how one should judge the quality of the show. There are too many uncontrollable factors, and you can't put title matches on every Raw without really screwing things up, so what do you do?

Make the TV more episodic, which will create more interest in people tuning in to see what will happen next week. Also, hyping up matches a week in advance doesn't hurt. Kendrick vs. Perkins also felt big even though it wasn't a title match.

Agreed on all fronts, I still think it's silly that dirtsheets report ratings and companies live and die by them, seems like i weird holdover from Monday Night War times

NWK2000 wrote:

Big Red Machine wrote:

NWK2000 wrote:I've always thought wrestling ratings were fickle and not how one should judge the quality of the show. There are too many uncontrollable factors, and you can't put title matches on every Raw without really screwing things up, so what do you do?

Make the TV more episodic, which will create more interest in people tuning in to see what will happen next week. Also, hyping up matches a week in advance doesn't hurt. Kendrick vs. Perkins also felt big even though it wasn't a title match.

Agreed on all fronts, I still think it's silly that dirtsheets report ratings and companies live and die by them, seems like i weird holdover from Monday Night War times

That's exactly what it is. Obviously ratings are important, but it's not the week to week that is important so much as the general trends.