WWE Lies About Ratings Again?, SNME Rating Tanks, & More
? Last night's edition of Saturday Night's Main Event based around actress Jenny McCarthy raising awareness for Autism didn't do too well in the ratings to say the least. For starters, the show finished in last place in its time slot, getting beat out by America's Most Wanted on Fox, Wipeout on ABC, and a show by the name of Flashpoint on CBS at the same time slot. Well technically, Saturday's Night Main Event didn't finish in last place out of all the networks as the show likely beat out the offerings from The CW and MyNetworkTV, so perhaps WWE can take solace in that. Then again, those stations never offer original programming on Saturday nights, so maybe they're ratings on Saturdays don't count. Saturday Night's Main Event drew slightly more than half the total viewership of America's Most Wanted on Fox during the same timeslot. We don't have the exact rating, but the show drew 2.38 million viewers according to an article from TVByTheNumbers.com. Believe it or not, the show got beat out by a recent edition of Elite XC on CBS. More than likely, the rating will come in at a 1.4 or 1.5 rating, by far the worst rating in the storied history of Saturday Night's Main Event. And they were in better time slot this time around too, not at midnight.
? Saturday Night's Main Event featured Jeff Hardy vs. Edge, John Cena, Batista & Cryme Tyme vs. JBL, Ted DiBiase, Cody Rhodes & Kane, and The Great Khali vs. Jimmy Wang Yang. The TV preview advertised a slew of celebrities (and no wrestlers) including Jenny McCarthy, Toby Keith, Jewel, Piers Morgan, Carmen Electra, Billy Ray Cyrus, and the cast of Nashville Star. It would appear that the lure of celebrities didn't work too well in nabbing the non-wrestling fan. On the plus side, Saturday Night's Main Event was not the least watched show of the evening. The one-hour block of the critically-acclaimed show The Office that aired right before SNME at 8:00 p.m. only managed to draw 1.64 million viewers.
? This past Tuesday, WWE.com posted an article talking about WWE programming dominating the TV ratings. The link on the Raw section says: "The WWE Universe is watching in record numbers. Last week's Raw was the most watched program in all of cable TV." Not too sure what they mean by "record numbers." The article said that the July 21 edition of Raw was the most watched program in all of cable television that week. They wrote: "The July 21 edition of Raw, in which World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk battled Batista, was the most watched program in all of cable television last week." However, according to an article the Associated Press put out last week regarding the cable ratings for the week of July 21-27, TNT's The Closer was the most watched show on cable that week. The 7/21 episode of The Closer garnered 7.06 million viewers, a figure WWE hasn't reached in quite some time. According to the Associated Press article, the second hour of Raw finished in seventh place for the week, so it wasn't even close to being the most watched program in all of cable television. The 7/21 Raw featuring WWE World Heavyweight Champion CM Punk in the main event even got beat out by a Miley Cyrus television concert on the Disney Channel, "Best of Hannah and Miley," finishing in fourth place. The WWE.com article also notes that the 7/25 SmackDown was the No. 1 show among men between the ages of 18 and 49 for the night, which seems to be a bit more plausible.