WWE RAW Audience Drops Below 3 Million, Has Lowest Viewership Of Modern Era For Non-Holiday Episode

Last night's episode of WWE Monday Night RAW garnered the lowest audience for a non-holiday episode since the Monday Night Wars. The show averaged 2.911 million viewers, a steep 12% drop from last week's episode, which averaged 3.314 million viewers.

The show was up against the Olympics on NBC, which averaged 28.8 million viewers. The audience for the Olympics on Monday was down from 2012 (31.6 million) and 2008 (30.2 million), although it was better than the numbers in 2000 (21 million) and 2004 (27.1 million).

As a comparison, the episode of RAW against the first Monday night of the Olympics in 2012 averaged 4.495 million viewers.

The first hour of RAW averaged 2.95 million viewers, before rising slightly to 2.974 million viewers in the second before falling to 2.809 million viewers in the final hour. It is the first time that all three hours of a non-holiday show scored less than 3 million viewers since the show permanently went to three hours in July of 2012. It is only the fourth time the show has averaged below three million viewers since that time, with the most recent being the Fourth of July episode last month that garnered 2.658 million viewers.

RAW was still the most watched show on cable last night, but was behind Love & Hip Hop Atlanta in the 18-49 demo.

Update 4:45 PM ET: Fixed an earlier version to correctly state that the second hour averaged 2.974 million viewers before dropping to 2.809 million viewers in the third hour.

Source: Showbuzz Daily