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Same old, same old.
No matter which way you slice it, it's troubling for WWE that the ratings pattern has remained largely the same. This week, it got even worse.
The numbers simply aren't holding up over three hours. Viewers have now grown accustomed to tuning in an hour earlier than normal, a good sign seeing as it only took a couple months for that to be the case, but by the third hour a lot of fans are leaving in droves.
Even if the product is good and the stories compelling, three hours is a lot.
The latest episode of Monday Night Raw garnered a 2.72 rating and an average of 3.92 million viewers. Here's how the hours break down:
Hour one: 4.15 million
Hour two: 4.13 million
Hour three: 3.48 million
That's a big drop off in the final hour. For comparison's sake, the Monday Night Football game on ESPN, which saw the Carolina Panthers defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 30-22, drew just over 10 million viewers and the numbers were steady throughout the game. That's a lower than normal number -- the game usually pulls around 12 million or so -- but at least viewership remained steady all throughout.
The same can't be said for Raw and as noted in the reactions post, this show suffers greatly for it because the final hour was arguably the best of the three.
For complete results and the running live blog click here. For reactions to the show click here. And for a video playlist of the entire show click here.