WWE Raw ratings down 13 percent on Memorial Day

[Big Red Machine]

Source: www.F4WOnline.com


By Dave Meltzer | @davemeltzerWON | May 29, 2019 2:16 pm

Raw on Memorial Day did 2.19 million viewers, which would be the fourth lowest number for the show in modern history.

The only episodes lower were last year's shows on both Christmas and New Year's Eve and the April 29, 2019 show, which did 2.16 million viewers.

However, Raw was first for the night on cable since the news channels ran rerun programming. The show was down 12 percent from last year's Memorial Day episode, but that show went against game seven of the Warriors-Rockets NBA playoffs series that did 14.81 million viewers and game one of the Stanley Cup finals that did 5.20 million viewers.

This year's show had no NBA competition, while the Monday night Boston Bruins vs. St. Louis Blues game one this year did 5.25 million viewers.

The good news is that there wasn't the usual big first-to-third hour drop, which was only 9.4 percent, partially because of how low the first hour was.

Overall the audience dropped 13 percent from last week. Last year's drop on Memorial Day was 6.5 percent and in 2017 the drop was 2,000 viewers and 2016 was 39,000 viewers, or tiny. So historically, Memorial Day has not been a day ratings dropped significantly until this year, although part of that was the unusually high number based on recent weeks that last week's show did coming off Money in the Bank and the Brock Lesnar cash-in tease.

The weak first hour and overall, against far less competition, indicates that going to the well with that angle a second time didn't pay off.

The three hours were:

8 p.m. 2.27 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.25 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.05 million viewers

[cero2k]

there was a lot of talk that they did the same thing with Brock hinting a cash in and then not delivering at the end, with the hopes of keeping the fans throughout the show. Seems like it worked, but it's also likely the last time they do it, or maybe that at this point the fans won't believe the cash in is coming anymore.