Raw ratings plummet against first NFL competition of the season

Everyone knew that the first week of football season was going to take a bit out of the Raw ratings, but even in a worst case scenario, I don’t think anyone expected this.

The feeling was that Raw would struggle to top 3 million viewers, and fall under it some weeks, and probably start out in the 2.9 million viewer range, similar to how it did against the Olympics.

Last night’s Raw did 2.68 million viewers, barely beating out the 2.62 million for the July 4th show this year. Aside from that show, from a ratings standpoint this will probably be the lowest rated show since October 14, 1996, and that’s when it was going head-to-head with another wrestling show, major league playoffs and an NFL game.

The Steelers-Redskins game that went against most of Raw did 12.96 million viewers. The 49ers vs. Rams game that started at 10:12 p.m. did 10.25 million viewers.

There is at least a possibility that SmackDown tonight will beat Raw. Raw still beat SmackDown’s number last week, but most SmackDown shows have done roughly the same as Raw did last night.

The show started weak and steadily declined over the three hours.

The individual hours were:

8 p.m. 2.83 million viewers
9 p.m. 2.72 million viewers
10 p.m. 2.52 million viewers