WWE Raw rating and viewership patterns night after Royal Rumble, key metrics compared to past years and special episode

Last night’s episode of WWE Monday Night Raw on USA Network – the “Day After Royal Rumble” episode – drew a 1.34 rating, up from last week’s 1.27 rating, but below the Raw “Legends” special five weeks ago that drew a 1.46. This week’s episode is the third time it drew better than 1.30 since Nov. 23, and is the third-highest since the Aug. 31 episode drew a 1.35.

In the 18-49 demographic, Raw drew a 0.58 rating (0.61, 0.57, 0.55 for each hour). All three hours of Raw topped all cable shows in that key demo on Monday night. Several news/politics shows drew more viewers, with “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC drawing 3.7 million total viewers, topping “Tucker Carlson Tonight” which draw nearly 3.6 million on Fox News, “Lawrence O’Donnell” on MSNBC which drew 3.1 million, and “Cuomo Prime Time” which drew nearly 2.2 million on CNN.

The first-to-third hour dropoff was 170,000, one of the smaller recent dropoffs. The average this year is 241,000. Raw headlined with Edge vs. Randy Orton.

One year ago, Raw popped a 1.92 rating for the “Day After Royal Rumble” episode, up from the 1.66 the week before. Raw’s jump this year was much smaller – 0.07 this year compared t0 0.26 last year. Two years ago it popped a 1.92 rating, up from 1.73 the week before, for an increase of 0.19.

The ten-week rolling average rating for Raw is 1.256. One year ago this week, the ten-week rolling average was 1.575.