Raw last night bounced back to 2.32 million viewers, which normally wouldn’t be considered good — but going against the Clemson vs. Alabama ollege football championship game that did 24.32 million viewers, it wasn’t bad either.
It was up 18 percent from last week’s New Year’s Eve episode of Raw, but it was a given it would be well above the prior two weeks.
It appeared the big ratings boost came from the return of Hulk Hogan and the Gene Okerlund tribute, since the first hour was strong and there was a huge dip in both hours two and three. John Cena also wrestled in the first hour in a six-man tag match. They saved Brock Lesnar for hour two, and had Ronda Rousey in hour three, but Rousey in a talk show segment wasn’t going to mean much, nor did the Seth Rollins vs. Dean Ambrose match help the third hour since the two had already wrestled.
The 21 percent first-to-third hour drop would be among the largest of all time.
It was a 30 percent drop in women 18-49, and 23 percent drop in men 18-49, 42 percent drop in females 12-17, 23 percent drop in males 12-17 but only a 14 percent drop among those over 50 which is a key percentage of the audience.
Raw was 10th for the night, trailing only college football related programming and news programming.
With this being the last Monday night with football, next week should start the traditional bounce back and best ratings period of the year from now until the end of April.
The three hours were:
8 p.m. 2.61 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.29 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.07 million viewers