By James Caldwell, Torch assistant editor

USA Network issued a press release today announcing their best weekly TV ratings ever in the channel's history last week.

The achievement was buoyed by two hours of WWE Raw and 7.6 million viewers for "Burn Notice," which was their most=viewed show in channel history.

USA averaged 4.1 million viewers in prime time during the week, including the season premieres or finales of Burn Notice, In Plain Sight, Monk, and PSYCH.

USA Network listed all of their shows contributing to the numbers including "series Royal Pains, WWE Monday Night Raw, and hot acquired series NCIS and Law & Order: SVU."

Caldwell's Analysis: Two things come to mind. The last two weeks of Raw have felt more like "TV shows that just happen to feature some wrestling" more than any other time I recall the past few years. WWE turned their version of entertainment from "pro wrestling on TV" to "a scripted TV show featuring pro wrestling" a long time ago, but it's becoming more and more obvious to the average viewer, especially when last week's show was a two-hour commercial for "The Goods."

The second thing is the BusinessWeek interview with USA Network executive Chris McCumber who said, "They have something to promote, and we have the platform that they need. Raw is like a male soap opera anyway. We're just adding a little more entertainment." Nothing ground-breaking there. But, the emphasis is on the "scripted entertainment" aspect of Raw. WWE's TV product on Monday nights hasn't been about the wrestling for years, but wrestling seems to be completely out of the picture when viewing WWE's flagship product from a corporate set of lenses.

Which brings me to the point to be made. USA including "WWE Monday Night Raw" in their list of scripted entertainment series begs the question of why the performers on said Raw show are not protected by the Screen Actor Guild, don't have protection like Tony Shalhoub on "Monk" or Jeffrey Donovan on "Burn Notice," and are still considered independent contractors when WWE controls which "scripted entertainment shows" the performers are allowed to perform on.

WWE wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want to be considered "Hollywood" and not 'rasslin like the good folks at TNA, but they don't want their wrestlers to be considered "Hollywood" to avoid those pesky folks at SAG from getting involved in their simple little scripted entertainment series on Monday nights. It's amazing how long WWE has been able to keep up this gig without anyone batting an eye despite more and more of a shift toward "scripted entertainment" with little emphasis on wrestling. They are entering territory where it's tougher to justify not being part of SAG.

Link: USA Network press release.

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