I suspect it will next week. It barely was above 2 million this week in the 3rd hour.

Note the sharp decline (again) from Hr 1 to Hr 3.

Also, this is the 2nd lowest rating for RAW in 2019, ahead of only last week.

Also, the 5th lowest rated Raw of all time.

Phew. Crisis averted. Time to relax, guys.

If CyNick were still alive he would have made that same post with 0 sarcasm.

Great talent working great matches every week. Great time to be a fan.

I also wish Destor was still here to tell us we're all dumb marks and Vince is a genius who's framed the office as the heels to pique our interest... despite nobody watching.

Destor coming back would be a good way to ensure I take a prolonged break from TPWW.

CyNick would be praising their strategy

I always enjoy when people go on and on about how 'ratings don't matter to WWE' and then every time ratings drop WWE 'all of a sudden, for no reason' decides to make some big change or throw a ton of people on RAW.

Hmmm!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is my formula for saving <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WWERaw?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WWERaw</a>:<br><br>I think WWE should let the wrestlers say mean things to each other and talk about how awesome and tough they are. And not all talk like they are trying to audition for an Adam Sandler movie in 1998.<br><br>Also, have cool <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/wrestling?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#wrestling</a> matches.</p>&mdash; JE Snowden (@JESnowden) <a href="https://twitter.com/JESnowden/status/1125556840631349248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2019</a></blockquote>
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I love Destor. INCREDIBLY knowledgable about wrestling. But his love of the smell of his own farts became a bit too much to deal with.

And that's why you got rid of him.

My proudest scalping.

You can barely count the number of stars WWE has made in probably the last decade. And you only become a star through two processes.

You either debut straight into the main event and so never get sucked into the black hole that is the WWE midcard (Styles, Charlotte, and The Shield).....and even then Ambrose eventually got sucked into the midcard)

Or you become a star in spite of the booking, rather than because of it as a poster child for fan backlash (Bryan and Becky).

If you don't enter the main roster as a massive deal and go immediately into world title contention, it's 99% likely that you're done right out of the gate.

tbh pretty sure Destor would too

slight rise of 100k for SD

Why did everyone turn on Destor? What did I miss? I liked the guy.

Great talent working the same match every week.

Nobody turned on Destor, he just got really unhappy posting here IIRC

Destor knew a lot about the business since he's supposedly worked the indies (but he never disclosed his ring name)

But he often times seemed like he was just trying to be the forum contrarian.

In Destor’s defense, this place does suck a lot of the time.

Of course, CSL was also in the business and was kinda similar in that he'd be one of the few people defending WWE amongst a sea of negativity.

Maybe there's something to be said about how people in the business invariably view the company differently than most of us because they're focused on more than just "was the show good?" Or more specifically...they have a different way of interpreting if a show was good.

Like that Al Snow shoot I reference all the time where he asks what the best match of WM3 was and when the guy says Savage/Steamboat, he was like "fuck no, Hogan and Andre sold the tickets and therefore it was the best match"

I'd be surprised if Destor thought the current product was good at all tbh

Between here, twitter, etc I have never seen so many people say they are are fed up, not going to watch anymore or just about not going to watch if it continues. Even an account I follow on insta that gets pics of the sets for WM/RR before they leak said they are done.

If you read a lot of comments on WWE's tweets/posts on fb too it's a big trend lately as well.

Note: I try to never read comments on FB posts in general.

There’s a logic to that though. I can understand that perspective without having worked a lick.

I didn’t really get Destor as a WWE apologist, honestly. He seemed more critical of the dirt sheets, which could be a guarded business thing. But mainly he just looked at metrics and made sense a lot of the time. Raw was still doing comparatively well on cable. I’d like to think he’d look at them sliding at a faster rate than other properties and call a spade a spade.

The only WWE apologists I’ve really really seen on here are CyNick and more recently STD for some reason.

Also for what it's worth with Destor - I don't even think it was a TPWW-exclusive thing. He'd mentioned that he also eliminated nearly all of his social media presence and was just spending less time on the internet in general.

I like to think he is living in a cabin with a corgi, miles away from other civilization

Sounds good to me, honestly. More power to the guy.

Find it a bit interesting that the show went up in viewers but the Youtube views took a massive hit going by Most Watched.

Last week was 1 million & 690k for top videos while this week was 680k & 480k going by the posts.

Could just be a simple side effect of them delaying uploading videos or worse, people starting to tune out on not even bothering to watch clips anymore.

The “hardcores” are rallying behind WWE. This is their fan movement pushing those ratings up.

They aren't delayed much, re: YT vids

They just wait until Midnight Eastern to upload now instead of during the show itself, which I don't know why they were ever doing in the first place lol.

Pretty excited about this week's ratings. Don't the taped UK shows typically do a little worse? They're also coming off a shitty week last week.

My guess is the show drops this week. I would guess 1.9 - 2 million.

Taped show + big ratings drops lately + just wasn't very good overall.

RAW went slightly up

Either people were really bored on Monday or someone in WWE sold their soul to somehow get a taped show that wasn't good to actually go up in numbers when the opposite usually happens.

Yeah, really too bad in this instance....we need the show to pretty much crash under 2 million solidly for a bit so WWE feels like they have to make real, substantial changes...not just put a band-aid on larger problems.

Boo. I want this bullshit to crash and burn.

I mean it is, but I mean without reprieve.

Rather surprised at in increase for a taped, pretty lame show.

I'm hearing there was no competition. And the taped/live thing has been debunked as a myth these days, especially with WWE being more in-line with how entertainment is perceived as opposed to live sports.

SD tied it's record low rating

New record low actually slightly (1.827m vs. 1.833m on April 30)

The Wild Card Era bay bay!

Not surprising, considering it was taped (I think this makes a bigger difference for secondary programming), and SmackDown always suffers when the roster split ends. Wasn’t there also something more important on?

Post Wrestling's Rewind-A-Smackdown show had a very interesting discussion on how much of a mess and blunder Vince's Wild Card idea has become.

They legit stopped last night's review show for a few minutes just to debate on if a Lacey Evans promo video counted for the "4 person" rule because of how confusing WWE has been trying to follow it.

I wouldnt count a pretaped promo

a non-competitive nba game

Slight bump after MITB

“Look at those YT views, we’re making good choices!”

3rd hour not being a total disaster helped out a lot. Had it been like the past couple of weeks of being right near the 2 million line, then there is no PPV bump and it would have actually been lower than the week before.

Also :lol: at Truth's 24/7 title win being more popular than the actual debut of the belt itself.

I'm telling you that Lesnar cash in hook has a shelf life, but for a few weeks it will certainly keep some people bailing on the 3rd hour.

This is a rattle. People are tuning in, but are they impressed?

Live TV ratings for SDLive are in - 3rd week under 2 million

They only need to find 1.5 million viewers on a network with 25% more exposure. Easy done.

RAW drops this week 300k

Really surprised the big drop off didn't happen between the 1st and 2nd hour considering the lack of wrestling and how boring the 1st hour was even by WWE standards.

For SD a slight bump (opposite of RAW)

RAW went up this week

I'm sure they were thoroughly impressed by the show.

One of the rare times in the year where the 3rd hour does better than the 1st.

According to the Observer, that 1st to 2nd hour increase was the largest since March 2015.

Was that when they were promoting Brock?

Had to look it up and it was them promoting Jon Stewart on the show again. The prior week Stewart kicked Rollins in the nuts.

Same show also had Curtis Axel in his Hogan-like "AxelMania" persona get destroyed by Cena during Cena's road to beating Rusev for the US belt at Mania 31.

Oh, sorry, I meant this week with the second hour doing well. Was that when Brock was supposed to cash in? If so, I wonder how people feel about having their interest punished that way?

Kudos on your researching though.

Yeah and its probably due to people correctly knowing WWE wasn't going to do a cash-in early into the show and it would likely happen either in the 2nd or 3rd hour.

Last time Taker was on RAW he was the main event so its likely people knew the cash-in attempt wasn't going to be last and made a stronger case of it happening somewhere in the 2nd hour or at the start of the 3rd.

WWE Ratings Thread - RAW goes up
 

I forgot to post SD ratings from last week, it did 2.07 million viewers

Goldberg/Taker currently (today) has 7.9 million views on YT
Elias/R-Truth has 2 million
Truth hiding under the ring has 1 million
Shane attack Roman has 915k

btw, YT views this week for RAW looking really bad so far....read NBA game did big ratings (14 million) as well.

RAW ratings should be out in about 100 minutes...

NBA/E3

^ New low for a non-holiday episode btw

According to Meltzer, women viewers were a big reason for the record setting drop.

They are gonna start getting murdered in the fall.

One can only hope.

Terrible show gets terrible rating.

News at 11

“R-Truth inside a box” being 4 times more popular than any other segment on a WWE show sounds like the punchline of a lazy “lolWWE” joke.

People keep telling me that R-Truth is one of the most entertaining things on WWE TV right now, and I don't think they understand why that is a problem.

Seeing this thread title, I wanted to repost the out of context "Not a good night for Osprey's nuts" bit, but I can't seem to find the source to do so. So I guess I have to retire that joke.

RAW ratings for 6.17.19

Them only getting a little over 100k more viewers with the NBA Playoffs being over is somewhat bad.

Next week's post-PPV bump probably going to be a mix of the usual PPV bump and the remainder of viewers coming back from the playoffs.

I don't think there is going to be a bump after Stomping Grounds, of all things. Unless they do something completely wacky because they're cranky about the low attendance.

2.23 is a horrible number. I had 2.5 in my head as the lows Raw has fallen to, with 2.3 being terrible and 2.1 being scary. 2.2 is very close to the bottom falling out.

SDLive ratings are in:

I go back and forth on this all the time, but ratings are truly meaningless in the big picture. That is not just for WWE, but for any show. As long as advertisers are willing to buy time for said show, then the week to week ratings do not matter. Yes, there is a point where an advertiser would no longer want to buy time if they are looking at a lower rating, but if the show can get a different advertiser to buy that time, then it really doesn't matter.

Until advertisers start threatening to leave, I think WWE will continue to put out the same tired and lazy product.

I mean if you need any further proof, they haven't made any effort to write better TV even after the networks let them know they wanted better ratings. Sure WWE reacted with some heap ploys to bump the number like Roman on both shows or Brock teasing cash ins, but they haven't done anything to make better storylines, or even advance anything.

They are still rerunning the same Firefly Funhouse on Smackdown that already aired on Raw the night beofre.

They are still pushing the guy they blamed in storylines for the bad ratings be I in November.

They are still doing the authority stuff, only this time with Shane as the bad authority figure.

No new stars have been elevated. Nothing has changed in terms of their horrible timing of commercial breaks. Nothing has changed with their TV presentation of shaky cameras and 1000 different shot cuts. All the people they overlooked or booked badly are still stuck doing nothing.

It's all just been more of the same.

The ratings are down because the product is just filling up air time, but as long as WWE is still making advertisement dollars for filling that air time, then it is just a pointless number to WWE.

That's actually starting to become the case with advertisers no longer being happy with WWE's declining numbers. Its why WWE has been running more ads on RAW and Smackdown in recent weeks to keep USA Network and advertisers happy.

Even if they quickly replace lost advertisers, they will still lose a good chunk of ad money since those replacements very likely would be paying lower rates than the previous advertisers. Impact Wrestling found that out the hard way when they started bouncing around cable networks in recent years.

Lol, you say that ratings don't matter, but then go on to explain why they do. TV stations are going to sell the advertising slots. Advertisers are only going to buy them if there are eyeballs watching.

The thing is: they have been trying to write better TV. The whole McMahons coming back thing was part of that. The wild card thing and the 24/7 are supposed to be wild and zaaaaany antics that make you tune in. This is what they think good storytelling is. They believe they are good. And this is why the ratings have been such a news item lately -- because everyone is starting to cotton on to the fact that they're not. There are much better things to watch and they cannot retain their own viewers, nor can they keep viewers at a consistent rate with the decline of cable.

XRod hitting us up with some dumbass XRod logic.

What, that the product sucks and thus are getting low ratings, but that doesnt motivate WWE to try and do anything to be better, because ratings don't really matter.

They might throw a bandaid like the wildcard, but they haven't made any real effort to improve on any real long term level.

WWE is all about band-aids these days rather than long-term innovation/reinvention

total views per year by network (total viewership, exclusive of demographics) per Neislon

CBS 2017: 7,996,000 2016: 8,814,000 2015: 9,419,000 2014: 9,375,000
NBC 2017: 7,284,000 2016: 8,426,000 2015: 7,757,000 2014: 8,264,000
ABC 2017: 5,592,000 2016: 6,325,000 2015: 6,894,000 2014: 6,838,000
FOX 2017: 4,733,000 2016: 5,053,000 2015: 5,198,000 2014: 5,973,000

No one is arguing that things like the wild-card aren't band-aids. But that's what they've got. I mean, what do you mean "improve?" That's what their band-aids are there for.

Exactly. It's like being only treated for a superficial gash when you're also having a damn heart attack... and it's all because either the doctor is so inept they don't recognize the symptoms of the heart attack, or they do see the symptoms but they're so arrogant they believe they know better and that they don't need to to worry about or treat for the heart attack. They're still trying to improve the patient's health.

Improve as in don't book the whole show as a holding pattern. It's why they can't sell tickets for Stomping Ground, because it's been the same show for almost 3 months, on Monday and on Tuesday, nothing has happened.

Yeah, but that's what they want to do. That's why they're doing it. They think that's good. I think you're working from an outcome to suggest that if they wanted to be good they would be. They want to be, they just aren't.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">It's really not bad if you think about it. All of TV is down.<a href="https://t.co/QmXHo8EFTz">https://t.co/QmXHo8EFTz</a> <a href="https://t.co/dFRNkhg8t4">pic.twitter.com/dFRNkhg8t4</a></p>&mdash; Brandon Howard Thurston (@BrandonThurston) <a href="https://twitter.com/BrandonThurston/status/1142111001837486082?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 21, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The Twitter thread goes into more of the other issues rotting WWE from within while the company (and part of the fanbase) keeps boasting about all the money they are generating today.

The Death of WCW book is an excellent reference when it comes to detailing how devastating WCW's crash was when it happened. WWE won't have one happen as quickly but they have similar issues within that will cause even more serious problems in the near future.

Some of those numbers absolutely paint a different picture.

My question would be who is that gut, a financial adviser or just a wrestling fan.
WWE is going to be making tons of money for the foreseeable future, but that was already known.

They are basically where they were in 1994-1995-1996, where they have bottomed out creatively and almost went out of business.

The difference now is they don't have to worry about going out of business, because they are far too profitable despite themselves and the bad product they are currently putting out.

Until those revenue streams dry up. WCW thought they were going to be getting Uncle Ted’s money to play with forever and a day too.

Ratings for RAW this week:

The PPV bump being that small is pretty bad. Still a big chunk of RAW's audience has yet to come back now 2 weeks into the end of the NBA playoffs and probably won't going by historical trends.

Nba finals down nearly 25% this year :eek:


https://adage.com/article/media/nba-...ercent/2175311