Raw just isn’t the best option on TV anymore

This week’s episode of Monday Night Raw drew 1.69 million viewers, down from last week’s 1.82 million. The hourly breakdown shows the typical decrease in interest throughout the evening, but it was never all that high to begin with:

Hour one: 1.79 million
Hour two: 1.67 million
Hour three: 1.60 million

The Wrestling Observer put some context on these numbers:

As compared to the same week one year ago, Raw was down 28 percent in viewers, 31 percent in 18-49, and 43 percent in 18-34. As far as the first-to-third hour declines, the show was down 13 percent in women 18-49, 12 percent in men 18-49, 25 percent in teenage girls, up five percent in teenage boys, and down nine percent in over 50.

Raw was 44th for the night on cable. The reality is there are so many options and professional wrestling is low on the list of priorities. There were multiple football games that did over 14 and 8 million viewers, respectively, there was playoff baseball that did over 2 million viewers, and that’s without mentioning cable news programs that are doing incredible numbers during an election year while the President is Donald Trump and also he has COVID-19.

There’s no reason to think anything is going to change for the rest of the year, outside of maybe next week for the draft.

Get complete Raw results and coverage of the show here. For a recap of all the night’s events click here. For highlight from the show click here.