Raw Rating: Without Roman Reigns, and with a third hour absent any heavily hyped hook, viewership crashes (w/Keller’s Analysis)

Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network drew a 1.95 rating among live and same-night DVR viewership, up from the 1.90 the previous week and 0.05 below the 10 week rolling average headed into this week of 2.00.

The first hour viewership was back above 3 million (3.095 million), but then it dropped to under 2.5 million in the third hour (2.470). The dropoff from the first to the third hour was 625,000, the second biggest dropoff in the last eight weeks and only the third time all year there was a dropoff of more than 600,000.

The 1.95 is below last year’s same-week rating of 2.02 and the two-years-ago rating of a 2.66 (12-14-2015).

Keller’s Analysis: No Roman Reigns, and the rating went up, but without Roman Reigns advertised, they experienced one of the biggest drop-offs of the year. So some offsetting indicators of whether not having him on the show made a difference. While they mentioned the six-woman tag match that ended up being the main event, albeit more or less just a set-up for Stephanie McMahon’s announcement, it wasn’t built up as a big deal so the dropoff this week indicates building up and hyping the main event consistently throughout the first two hours, especially the first hour, is important. Had they announced Stephanie would have a big announcement at the start of the show, they probably would have had a considerably higher viewership. Had they had a longer six-woman tag match and had more interviews with participants giving viewers a reason to be more invested in the match would have also helped. And it wouldn’t have cost WWE anything.

NOW CHECK OUT THIS RECENT UPDATE: 12/18 WWE Raw HOLT Report: Details on what happened in Providence that didn’t air on USA Network last night including other matches, crowd reactions