What’s the story?
This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw didn’t fair well against the NBA Finals and lost approximately 434,000 viewers as the show progressed. The June 12th edition of Raw averaged 2.542 million viewers and set a new all-time low for 2017.
In case you didn’t know...
The first hour of Raw kicked off with a brawl between Samoa Joe and Brock Lesnar and a match between Dean Ambrose and The Drifter Elias Samson.
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The second hour of Raw featured a segment between Seth Rollins and Bray Wyatt and a 6-Woman Tag Team Match pitting Sasha Banks, Mickie James, and Dana Brooke against Emma, Nia Jax, and the Raw Women’s Champion Alexa Bliss.
The final hour of Raw featured a tag team match between Heath Slater and Rhyno against The Miz and a wrestler in a bear costume as well as Raw Tag Team Championship match between The Hardyz and Cesaro and Sheamus.
The heart of the matter
The following is the hourly breakdown for this week’s episode of Raw:
Hour 1: 2.769 million
Hour 2: 2.552 million
Hour 3: 2.335 million
The hour-to-hour drop in viewership stayed consistent throughout the entire program with 217,000 fans turning the channel heading into hours 2 and 3. The overall viewership average was 2.542 million; down 452,000 viewers from last week’s episode.
What’s next?
The main reason Raw’s numbers were so low this week are probably due to the competition from the NBA. The fifth game of the NBA finals began during the second hour or Raw and ended with the Golden State Warriors defeating the Cleveland Cavaliers 129-120 and winning the series 4-1.
Many fans felt that this show was poorly written and filled with short, boring matches and segments in anticipation of the low numbers.
Fans also justified this claim by alleging that the only reason Raw started with Lesnar and Joe was to get the important segment out of the way; a claim that could be true considering recent Raw episodes rarely start with the hottest angle.
Author’s take
Raw’s numbers may improve now that the NBA Finals isn’t in direct opposition to them, but that doesn’t completely excuse the WWE.
Many fans felt that there was nothing of value on the show aside from the Lesnar-Joe segment and the Raw Tag Team Championship match and have voiced similar opinions about the show even when they didn’t have other programs to compete against.
If the WWE continue to put on programming that the fans feel isn’t worth their time, Raw might be in big trouble when it’s time to negotiate a new TV deal for 2019.
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