Source: www.F4WOnine.com

By Dave Meltzer | @davemeltzerWON | May 9, 2017 1:35 pm

Raw fell to yet another non-football season and non-holiday record modern low last night with 2.68 million viewers for the show in London.

The audience dropped six percent over the previous low mark set last week of 2.86 million viewers.

The last time Raw numbers were at this point outside of football season was 1997, when it went head-to-head with Nitro.

Still, due to the declines at Fox News, Raw was second only to the Golden State Warriors-Utah Jazz NBA playoff game on TNT which did 4.52 million viewers.

The new low mark, besides a clear decline in interest since the switching of talent on the superstar shakeup show and following week for the novelty, would be due to the NBA competition and the fact the show was taped about five hours earlier.

In the past, being taped hadn't hurt the rating but it does appear that was the case here. Next week will be more evident because if the number is in the same ballpark for a live show, that would be a very bad sign.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.83 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.85 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.42 million viewers

But yeah, the problem defintiely isn't the way they write the shows or the direction of the company. That can't be it.

That's certainly a part of it, but TV as a whole has been on a downward trend for over a decade because there's more networks fighting for a slice of an ever shrinking pie.

Big Red Machine wrote:But yeah, the problem defintiely isn't the way they write the shows or the direction of the company. That can't be it.

I always say it. They will blame other outside factors such as competing shows, TiVo and available On Demand viewing rather than actually looking at their shows. On Raw they have a World Champion we havent seen since he won the title. On Smackdown they've got a World Champion who hasn't defended the title at all since winning it.

So if the shows aren't important enough for World Champions to be present and/or defend them, why should fans be bothered to view?

The bad direction and mis-direction and recycling of storylines is of course not at all to blame. The Miz and Dean Ambrose. We've seen it, less than 12 months ago, why are you recycling it just because it's on Raw? I love Braun Strowman, please stop putting him against Kalisto. So many constant New Era same old Shit moments.

Give me fresh matches, WWE has so much talent that there is no reason to have constant repeating undercard matches.

I got side tracked, but my point is very simple. People need to stop covering for the WWE, and begin to look at their stale, mostly predictable product. WWE is at it's best between Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. But they just seem to run out of steam and ideas for the rest of the year. That's what needs to be addressed.

One thing I will say is it appears they're somewhat trying to make something out of Kalisto... barely.