It was very clear that Raw was not going to do well last night until the interest generated when mainstream media picked up on the Daniel Bryan retirement story.
The show’s audience increased greatly, but ironically, likely due to the show not ending until 11:26 p.m., the third hour with the Bryan farewell speech fell greatly.
Raw did 3.68 million viewers, up nine percent from the nearly 18-year-low set the previous week.
The three hours were:
8 p.m. 3.91 million viewers 9 p.m. 3.91 million viewers 10 p.m. 3.37 million viewers
The show was second for the night on cable, trailing the O’Reilly Factor by 2,000 viewers.
TNA Impact ratings last night showed a minor decline from the past two weeks with last night’s 9 p.m. show doing 295,000 viewers and the midnight show doing 112,000 viewers.
The show, built around Matt Hardy vs. Kurt Angle, was the final of the Bethlehem tapings, as next week will be the first of six weeks of shows taped in the U.K. before much larger crowds.
The 9 p.m. show on 1/26 did 339,000 viewers and the midnight replay did 103,000. The combined number on 1/19 was almost identical, both about eight percent higher than last night.
There was little in the way of significant sports competition last night, as the highest rated sports show on television head-to-head was Indiana vs. Michigan college basketball on ESPN that did 1,042,000 viewers.
Raw set another all-time record low for the era for a non-football season broadcast last night averaging 3.37 million viewers.
The prior lowest audience outside of holidays and football season was 3.46 million set on June 29, 2015.
In particular was a strong third hour drop to 3.09 million viewers. Most of the third hours against the NFL topped last night’s final hour. This RAW was headlined by Roman Reigns & Dean Ambrose vs. New Day.
Going in, expectations weren’t strong with the Iowa Caucus coverage expected to hurt. The show was down 18 percent from last week, which showed the combination of the day after the Rumble increase and the Dwayne Johnson appearance didn’t carry over a week later.
For the three hours:
8 p.m. 3.59 million viewers 9 p.m. 3.46 million viewers 10 p.m. 3.09 million viewers
Impact last night did 339,000 viewers for the 9 p.m. show,up from 321,000 the week before. The show was built around a tease for Matt Hardy vs. Jeff Hardy match that didn’t take place.
The midnight replay did 103,000 viewers, down from 123,000 last week. So the combined 442,000 viewers was down from 444,000 the week before, numbers close enough that they are essentially the same thing.
The show also featured the results of the Feast or Fired briefcase reveals.
Due to a combination of Matt Hardy saying he would either win the title or leave TNA, leading to his heel turn, and an 11 percent increase in clearance of the station that went into effect on Friday, Impact was way up in ratings this week.
The Tuesday night show did 321,000 viewers on the first run episode and 122,000 on the replay. That’s up from 288,000 viewers last week for the 9 p.m. show and 77,000 for the midnight show.
The growth for the midnight show was real in the sense it gained more new viewers by percentage than the percentage of new homes getting the station. For the 9 p.m. show, the growth was almost exactly the same as the percentage of growth of the new clearances.
Due to a disastrous third hour, Raw did not have much of a bounce back after the end of football competition.
Monday night’s show did 3.48 million viewers, only up 160,000 viewers from last week’s show that went up against the national championship college football game.
On this night was clear what did the show in was the show itself, with major pattern of declines from start to finish, including a third hour that did 3.12 million viewers, a number that would have been considered poor even going against a huge NFL game.
The show was promoted around building to a Highlight Reel segment where Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns would meet face-to face. No major matches were plugged for hour three.
The three hours were:
8 p.m. 3.78 million viewers 9 p.m. 3.59 million viewers 10 p.m. 3.12 million viewers
Last Monday’s average viewership of 3.23 million viewers was the lowest for RAW in the month of January since the Monday Night Wars era. Viewers were down 14.48% from a year ago this week (January 12, 2015), which also went up against the NCAA college football national title title game. That particular edition of RAW averaged 3.89 million viewers, which, in itself, was down 11.67% from the same week in 2014.
The rating for the 2016 show was a 2.36, down 12.92% from the same week in 2015, and also the lowest January rating since before the Monday Night Wars.
The 2015 rating was a 2.71, down 12.86% from the previous year. It’s important to note that 2015 was the first year that of the current format of the NCAA college football playoffs, meaning that the championship game was later than it had been in previous years and had never gone up against RAW prior to that.
The average for the month of January is now 3.451 million viewers, well down from January 2015’s 4.035 million.
If this trend continues, it would be the 14th straight month that RAW viewership has dropped year-over-year with most of those months seeing a decline of more than 10%. Similarily, the combined rating so far in January is 2.43, down 17.8% from last year’s 2.95 rating in January.
While pro and/or college football has a clear effect on RAW’s ratings, that doesn’t tell the full story.
Every year, without exception, RAW’s viewership numbers drop generally about 5-10% as soon as the NFL season starts. After the season ends, the numbers generally return to slightly above the level they were prior to the football season, partially due to the “Road To Wrestlemania” season of January-March. This year, the decline was much worse than usual and the numbers were nearing record lows to begin with. The numbers will almost certainly rise now with the end of football on Monday nights, but it would take a drastic turnaround to get even close to 2015 totals. After Mania, when the viewerships traditionally drops again, it’s very likely that RAW will return to doing non-holiday record lows every week.
What about this week?
With nothing major promoted for last week’s show (Brock Lesnar appearing on the show wasn’t announced until later in the week), there is no reason to expect any increase to the Monday, January 18th rating other than the typical non-football bump. One year ago today, RAW did an average of 4.09 million viewers. The last 10 weeks, RAW has been averaging about 11% less than the previous year’s number, so the estimated numbers are 3.65 million viewers and a 2.65 rating.
Anything higher than could be a sign that WWE is slowly turning things around and something’s clicking. If the number is lower than that, the slide is getting worse. If they score anything around 3.5 to 3.8 million viewers, that’s a good sign things may be stabilizing.
TNA Impact rose slightly in its second week on Pop TV.
The show, built around the beginning of the Kurt Angle farewell tour and a singles match with Drew Galloway, did 288,000 viewers on the first airing of the show and 77,000 on the second airing at midnight.
Those numbers compare with 255,000 for the first airing last week and 90,000 for the replay, with a net increase of 20,000 viewers.
The numbers are about two-thirds of what the viewership was at this same point one year ago on Destination America, even though Destination America was in 17 million viewer homes.
Next week’s show is built around Matt Hardy vowing to leave TNA if he fails to win the title in the main event against Ethan Carter III. The show features the beginning of the Matt Hardy heel turn.
The Monday, January 11th edition of WWE Raw did surprisingly well considering it went against the NCAA football national title game which drew far more viewers than any NFL game had done against Raw during the fall.
The show did 3.32 million viewers, roughly the fall season average. The Alabama vs. Clemson championship game did 25.68 million viewers head-to-head. Raw was sixth for the night on cable, but all five shows that beat Raw were ESPN shows that were related to coverage of the game itself.
The good news, in a sense, was the third hour was not their lowest rated hour, so the concept of WWE Champion Roman Reigns vs. everyone (spurred on by Vince McMahon) and the waiting for Brock Lesnar to appear led to a slight increase during a period that usually is a decrease.
It’s also the end of any kind of football hurting Raw ratings on Monday, so the hope is that numbers should increase on a regular basis starting next week.
For a comparison, during November on Destination America (in 57 million homes as compared to POP TV’s 72 million), the show averaged 244,000 for the first run episodes and 84,000 for the replay for shows taped months earlier as opposed to the same day with promises of a new start and the ending of a several month long World title tournament.
TNA has always gotten hurt whenever it has switched days, even though it’s technically the third straight week on Pop on a Tuesday. The previous two shows did 111,000 and 136,000 viewers and were “best of” shows with little publicity.
In the first semifinal match last night, EC3 advanced by defeating Bobby Lashley while in the second semifinal, Matt Hardy beat Eric Young. EC3 beat Hardy in the main event of the show to win back the TNA World title. Kurt Angle was also on the show, doing a promo about his farewell tour that led to an announcement of a match with Drew Galloway on next week’s show.
