Raw Viewership for March 13th, 2023

[Lizuka #BLM]

showbuzzdaily.com/articles/showbuzzdailys-monday-3-13-2023-top-150-cable-originals-network-finals.html

Hour 1: 1.779 million (0.52)
Hour 2: 1.760 million (0.58)
Hour 3: 1.575 million (0.50)
Average: 1.705 million (0.53)

Lowest it's been on viewership since January 16th, though demo's higher than it was last week.

[Killah Ray]

I haven’t watched Raw since the one after the Rumble. Not even on my dvr. I’ll watch a segment if people talk about it but that’s about it. I probably won’t watch Raw till the night after Mania honestly.

[Fade]

Roman’s gotta draw next week brother.

[Mochi Lone Wolf]

Good. Show was dog water.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

The shows in a weird stall period so I'm not shocked

It feels like every storylines kinda moving at a slog right now, doesn't help half the Mania matches feel like a giant "Why is this a thing?" right now

[polarbearpete]

Demo was up, very good number. Up year over year still as well (which has been true all 3 months of the year so far).

[XIII]

Decent number or not, I doubt that they are very happy with it heading into WrestleMania. WWE is in a weird flux state these days. Going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

[polarbearpete]

Mar 15, 2023 10:16:47 GMT -5 XIII said:

Decent number or not, I doubt that they are very happy with it heading into WrestleMania. WWE is in a weird flux state these days. Going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

If the demo is the key for them, then I’m not sure why they’d not be happy with it. It’s up from last week and also up from last year. If they care a lot about the viewership, then it is a little light.

[Jindrak Mark]

Mar 15, 2023 10:52:00 GMT -5 polarbearpete said:

Mar 15, 2023 10:16:47 GMT -5 XIII said:

Decent number or not, I doubt that they are very happy with it heading into WrestleMania. WWE is in a weird flux state these days. Going to be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

If the demo is the key for them, then I’m not sure why they’d not be happy with it. It’s up from last week and also up from last year. If they care a lot about the viewership, then it is a little light.

Viewership seems to be back in vogue which is fine by me honestly. I went 10-15 years with the IWC only ever talking about number of viewers then all of a sudden during the Dynamite/NXT war everyone starting using the word demo all the time and treating viewership like a piece of shit at the bottom of your shoe. For whatever reason the past 6-12 months that's happening less though.

I fully understand that the demo is very important and has always been the key thing, particularly to advertisers, but as fans I really don't remember anyone caring about it before 2019. It was always like "show x gained/lost 100,000 viewers" or whatever that was focused on, not ""show x was up/down 0.1 in the demo." Even Meltzer was the same, as recently as early 2019 he was judging wrestling shows by viewers, not demo.

[darbus alan]

P2+ viewership became increasingly irrelevant because it's an inaccurate picture of how many people are actually watching. It's a comment on Nielsen's struggles to catch up with technology and how people consume their content, and also not factoring in other things like cord-cutting.

Demo is really the only thing that matters from a business perspective outside of outliers, despite what wrestling fans and journalists who still think it's the late 90's/early 00's want to think.

I guess the only reason why this week's viewership number even sticks out is because we're so close to Wrestlemania and this is the lowest one since Monday football (be it NFL or college) ended. But as PBP pointed out, the demo is up from last week and both numbers are better than around the same time last year. That's what WWE and NBCU care about more than anything. There's a certain expectation of audience decay for cable TV. WWE bucking the trend without outright growth year-to-year is a very good sign for them.