Vince McMahon is coming back to "shake things up." So I wouldn't say it doesn't matter to them at all. There's something that they're doing.

Vince boosts ratings, show lost 600,000 viewers between Vince and the third hour, but third hour is 400,000 more viewers than last week.

Yeah but they are a taped episode next week and will phone it in on New Years Eve, so whatever momentum they were hoping to build on is gonna be for nothing. The real test is gonna be the January 7th 2019 episode of Raw.

The January 7th episode will not be the test. They are going to be running head-to-head against the College Football Championship game. They are going to get slaughtered in the ratings that night and they already know it. It will be another phoned in episode.

The week after that is the one to watch imo.

The January 14th episode will not be the test. They are going to be running against a huge Duke/Syracuse College Basketball game and will get destroyed in the ratings.

The week after that is the one to watch imo.

Sadly, the only thing the rating pop will mean to Vince is he doesn't need to create new stars, he just needs more McMahons...

It'll be interesting to see what happens to those numbers now that another promise has been broken.

The genetic jackhammer is back!

RAW X-Mas Eve ratings were low, as expected due to holiday

It's as expected, but it still follows the "people would rather do something else" mold. I mean, WWE did throw in the towel with it and we live in post-DVR world. But I don't think ratings like these are harmless. If people get used to not watching Raw live and realize they have a better time doing other things, well...

Lowest ever?

Yeah

The show was #4 behind the NFL for the night, but they only got 0.55 share for the 18-49 demographic. As much as I find schadenfreude in their ratings getting lower and lower, that placement is probably the most important thing to them.

mnf is over now

RAW stayed below 2 million viewers again for NYE.

While the show will be live next week it is going up against the College Football Championship.

In terms of hourly declines, RAW did pretty well considering how small it was but then again they were also starting off with poor numbers.

Wouldn't be surprised if next week's bounce due to no holidays and MNF games doesn't come close to bringing back to what they did 3 weeks ago. 500k seems way too much to get back in a week and the hyped up changes promised already lost a lot of its luster for RAW.

They can pull another 1.1 million if they tweet out a Sasha/Bayley/Moon vs Riot Squad match for RAW.

There are the obvious excuses for ratings decreasing over the holidays, but are people really going to miss watching Raw? These dips are never good news, even if they are expected, because you’re bound to lose some weekly viewers who realize that they don’t care and never come back.

SD defeated RAW once again this week

There have been special event anomalies where SmackDown has defeated Raw in recent memory, haven't there? But is this the first time in a while that Smackers has bested Raw? Honestly, as hot as Becky is getting and with them actually giving her the John Cena push now, I can see things staying pretty close. At least until she wins the Royal Rumble and jumps over to Raw.

Yes but don't believe its ever happened twice in a row, at least since the first brand split era ended.

Even with the College football title game next week, slim chance the blue brand can pull it off for a third week in a row. Something like a 100-200k bounce should be enough for RAW to break that streak.

Shit, that's what I meant to ask -- if this is the first time it happened two weeks in a row since Heyman booked. Not sure if this is good or SmackDown or bad for Raw or inconsequential.

A lot more bad than good for both brands since Smackdown still heavily relies on needing a strong RAW to act as a lead in and isn't strong enough on its own to offset or carry RAW.

When Smackdown used to be on UPN & CW, it had some buffer against RAW's struggles due to having stronger Hispanic and African American markets that helped minimalize any losses RAW was causing to them. Pretty much helped keep the show at a more stable level in terms of viewership range while RAW was spiking a lot more harder in both directions.

They could be entering that situation again with FOX in a few months, but I can imagine casual fans liking this product. And there's not as much authentic representation as there once was. Rey Mysterio is around, but there's no Eddie Guerrero. Every Hispanic guy they push has this "Look! It's a Hispanic guy!" vibe to them.

One of those mixed Good/Bad type weeks.

The good being they got a nice sizable bump and that likely ends Smackdown's win streak.

The bad being they suffered a huge hourly drop as usual and got hammered in the rankings (7, 8, & 10) meaning viewers still didn't feel as interested in watching RAW after the college game turned into a blowout.

That 2 million viewer mark seems like a magic number. That being at 2 million for hour three means it’s probably going to dip further in coming weeks and months.

Same as last week?

Yep

They got the predictable big bump from no more football on Mondays for a while but the bigger news is the 3rd hour doing very well.

Just proof that when WWE actually puts in the effort into making the 3rd hour interesting, people are more willing to stick around to watch the entire show.

Raw lost 700,000 viewers from Hr 1 to Hr 3.
That has to be one of the biggest drops in the show's history

THE NEW ERA! IT'S WHAT THE FAN WANT!

According to the Observer, that set a new record for worst ever drop. Previous record was an episode from October 2017.