WWE Raw viewers down despite historic announcement, number one contender match

This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw was heavily promoted and featured both the historic announcement of the first ever all women’s WWE pay-per-view, Evolution, and a match to determine who will challenge Brock Lesnar for the Universal championship at SummerSlam. That’s without even mentioning a Raw tag team title match.

Despite that, viewership was down from last week.

Indeed, this week’s show drew 2.77 million viewers, down from last week’s 2.86 million. The hourly breakdown:

Hour one: 2.82 million
Hour two: 2.82 million
Hour three: 2.70 million

The Wrestling Observer points out something interesting, however:

An interesting note, which is very much the exception to normal patterns, is that the women audience was more loyal, and actually grew, while the male audience was the one less interested as the show went on.

In women 18-49, the first-to-third hour growth was 10 percent while the male drop was one percent. With teenage girls, the first-to-third hour growth was 15 percent while the male drop was seven percent.

We’ll see what this means for next week.

For complete results and the live blog for Raw this week click here. To read a complete recap and review of all the night’s events click here. To watch highlights of the show click here.