By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE Raw on Monday, September 29 scored a 2.83 rating, up five percent from a year-low 2.69 rating last week.

Raw was boosted by increases in the males 18-34 & 18-49 demographics. M18-34 hit a three-month high and m18-49 hit a six-week high.

- Raw averaged 4.039 million viewers, up four percent from last week's audience. Raw climbed over the four-million mark for the first time in one month dating back to the post-Summerslam episode.

The first and third hours were nearly identical as last week. The big difference was the second hour - Raw gained 200,000 viewers instead of losing 200,000 viewers, which was the case last week. But, that meant a sharp eight percent decline in this week's third hour.

Hourly Break Down: 4.015 million first hour viewers, 4.222 million second hour viewers, and the sharp decline to 3.882 million third hour viewers (similar to 3.847 million last week) despite the NFL game turning into a blow-out.

- On cable TV Monday night, Raw ranked #2 behind Monday Night Football on ESPN, which drew a strong audience of 14.4 million.

Caldwell's Analysis: With little hype for Hulk Hogan appearing on Raw, really the only change/addition was Dean Ambrose back in the spotlight. Ambrose returned to TV last week, there is sometimes a lag on the audience responding, and it appears a significant number of casual/irregular viewers returned to Raw (at least during the first two hours) this week perhaps to see what Ambrose was up to. There's also the WWE Phenomenon of when a significant number of casual/irregular viewers tune out one week (such as the case last Monday when Raw hit a year-low rating), they tune back in the following week to get their fix after missing one show. So, it's a week-by-week ratings evaluation at this point.

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