Raw ratings last night fell 12 percent even though the episode was coming off a PPV, doing 2.68 million viewers, a shockingly low number that would be among the lowest in modern history.
The number is far below what the shows have been doing and there was no television competition that would explain that level of a drop, although the NBA playoffs did a strong number. Ratings normally increase after PPVs, but Backlash was considered among the worst PPVs in company history. Still, there is no history of terrible shows leading to weaker ratings one day later.
The key was that the audience started very low, and then dropped slightly from there. It wasn’t so much a huge turnoff during the show as much as 348,000 viewers that were there for hour one last week, were not there this week.
Raw was fifth for the night on cable, with the NBA game head-to-head doing 5.90 million viewers, which is a big number, as last week’s NBA game did 4.69 million viewers.
There were no great tune-out numbers from hour two to hour three as usual in any of the key demos.
The three hours were:
8 p.m. 2.79 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.73 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.55 million viewers