– As we noted earlier this week, the Memorial Day edition of WWE Raw garnered the second lowest rating in the history of the show, second only to the Raw show which aired during the first Trump vs Clinton Presidential debate. Furthermore, it was noted only one episode of WCW Monday Nitro drew a lower rating than Raw this week, and that show aired on December 11th, 2000.
While some people are blaming the recent low WWE TV ratings on cord cutting, The Wrestling Observer is reporting the rating is based on the percentage of homes that get the USA Network, so cord cutting doesn’t factor into the rating.
The Observer also noted that the USA Network is available in 91.8 million homes, while it was available in 92.7 million homes a year ago, a drop of 1%. This year’s RAW rating was down 19.1% from last year’s Memorial Day episode, which scored a 2.19 rating and averaged 3.222 million viewers.
– On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer speculated about WWE’s current NBCUniversal TV deal expiring next year, and had the following to say on whether or not recent low ratings will spell out less money for the company in 2018:
“No. The whole television industry is changing so rapidly and in so many ways. There is just no way of knowing. What’s going to happen with rights fees. If rights fees skyrocket WWE will do well. Competitively they’re still doing well on cable, and if rights fees collapse, WWE will be, certainly not immune to that at all.”
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