Monday Night Raw Ties Lowest Ever Key Demo Rating With June 29 Show

WWE’s cable ratings continue to be badly affected by the pandemic and general disinterest both whittling away at their audience. While it’s hard to know exactly what any of this means because of the COVID-19 pandemic—as well as the change in the WWE TV presentation because of said pandemic—having an obvious negative effect on non-news TV ratings, this week’s show still cratered.

According to the top 150 cable originals rankings for Monday at Show Buzz Daily, this week’s edition of Monday Night Raw averaged a 0.49% rating in the key adults aged 18-49 demographic most valued by advertisers, tying the record low on May 4. Average total viewership across the three hours was similarly grim, hitting the 1.74 million mark, tying the third worst such number in show history. The key demo rating was off of individual hours that paint a much grimmer picture: 0.54%, 0.48%, and 0.43%. (Unlike other WWE programming, RawW is rated by Nielsen as three individual hours titled W is rated by Nielsen as three individual hours titled WWE Entertainment, a holdover from when WWE would divide the show up to inflate their number of highly rated individual programs.)

In a positive sign for WWE, Raw did still hold prime spots in the cable rankings for the key demo, with the three hours coming in third, sixth, and seventh place for the day, a slight improvement from last week where the placement was identical except for hour one coming in a tick lower at fourth place. At least among people watching cable and satellite programming during the pandemic, Raw is still doing incredibly well, even out-rating all news programming for the day in the key demo. The highest rated program from the cable news networks, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, did a 0.41% rating in the key demo for this week’s Monday edition, down from last week’s 0.45%.

Still, while there’s some good news to be found, it’s mostly grim. Even in Raw’s best demographic, adults aged 50+, the show was down from last week, doing a 0.86% rating (off hours of 0.90%, 0.87%, and 0.81%), down from last week’s rating of 0.94% (off hours of 0.98%, 0.96%, and 0.88%). Tucker Carlson Tonight, meanwhile, which has an audience that’s mostly 50+—hence the key demo ratingst that sound oddly low—was up slightly in the older demographic, doing a 3.22% rating, up from the 3.14% it did for last week’s Monday edition.

David Bixenspan is a freelance writer from Brooklyn, N.Y. He writes the Babyface v. Heel subscription blog/newsletter and co-hosts the Between The Sheets podcast every Monday at BetweenTheSheetsPod.com/everywhere else that podcasts are available. You can follow him on Twitter at @davidbix and view his portfolio at Clippings.me/davidbix.