WWE News: ‘Monday Night Raw’ Posts Record-Low Rating

In a surprise to no one, Monday Night Raw put up a positively abysmal rating for the Christmas Eve episode that aired this week. Not only did the show air on the eve of the giant holiday, but it was an episode taped the week prior, meaning many fans already knew what happened before even watching.

In the end, Raw did an average viewership of 1.78 million viewers, which is nothing short of bad.

That number is actually a decrease of 30 percent from last week. While everyone expected Raw to do a terrible number this week, no one quite expected such a huge drop from week-to-week.

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom, as just about everything was down on television because of Christmas Eve. Even the NFL game, which featured the Denver Broncos vs. Oakland Raiders, averaged 8.60 million viewers, which is quite low for a Monday Night Football game. In fact, it’s a 34 percent drop from last week’s Monday Night Football game, so it actually tanked harder than Raw.

Another interesting positive for the WWE is that the audience in the third hour was actually higher than the first, which is rare, as the show tends to see a decrease in viewers as each hour goes by. This is likely because only the most hardcore fans watched Raw, and those are the fans who tend to stick around until the end of the show regardless of the quality.

Raw was actually fourth on cable for the night, behind the aforementioned NFL game between the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders, SportsCenter at midnight, and the Monday Night Kickoff NFL preshow. All of the news shows, which typically beat Monday Night Raw, fell off this week, as many of them didn’t air new episodes.

Here’s the hour-by-hour breakdown as noted by The Wrestling Observer.

• 8 p.m. 1.75 million viewers
• 9 p.m. 1.79 million viewers
• 10 p.m. 1.78 million viewers

For some perspective on how much Raw has dropped over the year, there were multiple episodes in January and February that were able to get over 3 million viewers, while last week’s episode was considered a success with 2.55 million viewers on average. In fact, according to WrestlingInc., the average for the year is 3.02 million viewers.

This actually isn’t the first time the WWE has aired a show on Christmas Eve. Back in 2012, Raw aired on December 24 and did 3.15 million viewers, which shows a little more how the ratings have fallen off over the years.