By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Monday’s WWE Raw television show averaged 1.686 million viewers, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. Viewership was down from the 1.817 million average from last week.
Powell’s POV: Brutal numbers this week with all three hours falling below the two million mark and the third hour taking an especially big hit. The three hours of Raw finished third, fourth, and sixth in Monday’s cable ratings. The first hour of Raw averaged 1.807 million viewers. Hour two drew 1.691 million viewers. The final hour of the show averaged 1.560 million viewers. The May 6, 2019 edition of Raw delivered 2.244 million viewers.
They should really consider temporarily shortening Raw back to 1 and ½-2 hours until they are able to have fans again. These three hour empty arena shows tend to drag and you are asking yourself “is this over yet/when will it end?” a lot of the time. They should also do away with these crappy impromptu, unadvertised matches, just have advertised matches and segments and leave it at that. No one wants to think “the main event has to be up next and then this show can finally end” only to have several more matches and a few more segments magically thrown in there to fill even more time and make the show feel even longer.
Hour 3 has been a dead zone for a while anyways, so I don’t think it’s going to change now. That’s probably more on the USA side than the WWE side at the moment.
Not trying to make excuses, but a lot of people are struggling. They still are 3rd, 4th and 5th. A lot of people are cutting cable and this may be a factor right now. Plus, lots of people don’t have time for wrestling when they are trying to survive. However, WWE has to let the scripts go and let the wrestlers build their own persona. There is no Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold, The Rock, Undertaker in his prime, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Hot Rod, Crow Sting in WCW and more from that era. Even the announcers had personalities: Gorilla, Bobby Heenan, Jessie Ventura, Jim Ross, Mean Gene, Fink, Joey Styles and others in the 80s and 90s era. Personalities were way stronger than they are today. This is also why ratings are down in all of wrestling. None of these guys connect with a general audience. But just my opinion.
Further proof that characters that people can invest in are the biggest part of successful pro wrestling, not movesets or anything else. Give us people we can invest in taking part in storylines that make sense and matches that look like someone is trying to win more than just get their stuff in. Do that and fans will come back.