Raw’s numbers drop, but are still strong for this time of year

The Oct. 17 Raw was coming off some great numbers for its season premiere, and avoided having to go up against a win-or-go-home game featuring one the most popular franchises in all of sports when Game 5 of the New York Yankees/Cleveland Guardians series was rained out. But they still had to deal with Monday Night Football...

It led to declines from last week, but the numbers still look pretty impressive for this time of year.

Last night’s episode averaged 1.803 million viewers across its three hours, scoring a .50 rating among 18-49 year olds. That’s roughly a 1% decline in audience size, and a 9% drop from Oct. 11’s demo rating. Raw finished fifth among cable originals, with everything in front of it NFL coverage from ESPN. The game itself, an overtime win for the San Diego Chargers against the Denver Broncos, was watched by more than 12 million people with a 3.75 in 18-49.

The 8 & 9pm ET blocks delivered similar numbers to last week’s, but the final hour saw a bigger drop off than Raw’s been experiencing lately. Here’s the breakdown for total viewers and 18-49:

Hour One: 1.94 million / .54
Hour Two: 1.85 million / .51
Hour Three: 1.61 million / .44

A really interesting comparison is to one year ago, when Raw was doing historically bad numbers. Last night’s show had 14% more viewers & a 19% better rating than the Oct. 11, 2021 episode, and 13% bigger audience and a 28% improvement in the demo than the Oct. 18, 2021 edition.

We’ll see if they can keep it up next Monday without Brock Lesnar.

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

Numbers via Showbuzz Daily