Raw on 1/9 got hammered by the second most watched television show in the history of cable television.
The Alabama vs. LSU BCS championship football game did a 16.22 rating and 24.21 million viewers. The only show in the history of cable to do more viewers was last year’s BCS championship game on January 10, 2011, with Oregon vs. Auburn that did a 17.76 rating and 27.32 million viewers. The third biggest would be an October 5, 2009, edition of Monday Night Football that did a 15.3 rating and 21.84 million viewers.
While Raw was a blah show, most people knew ahead of time it was a show where you shouldn’t throw too much out because any kind of big angle would be wasted and should be saved for 1/16, when the January ratings bounce back should start building for the next three weeks. If that doesn’t happen, then it’s something to worry about.
The show did a 2.86 rating and 4.00 million viewers. It was 9th for the night on cable, with four of the eight shows that beat them being related to coverage of the game in some form. Notable is that NCIS, the show at 8 p.m. on USA, did 4.18 million viewers (the game started at 8:30 p.m. but the pre-game show on ESPN did monster numbers as well). But NCIS doesn’t draw the heavy male demo that both football and pro wrestling do. NCIS beating Raw I think has only happened once.
The show did a 2.5 in Male teens (up 9%), a 2.7 in Males 18-49 (down 4%), 1.3 in Women teens (up 44%) and 1.1 in Women 18-49 (down 8%). The show did 68.7% male viewers.
In the segment-by-segment, Sheamus & Santino Marella vs. Wade Barrett & Jinder Mahal lost 238,000 viewers. Edge Hall of Fame package, Zack Ryder and Eve Torres backstage and Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston gained 100,000 viewers. The debut of Brodus Clay vs. Curt Hawkins plus Miz trying to recruit Primo & Epico lost 82,000 viewers. C.M. Punk vs. Jack Swagger gained 128,000 viewers and did a 3.00 rating in the 10 p.m. slot, which is terrible for the slot. Backstage stuff with Bellas and Miz and Ricardo Rodriguez, Cena and Ryder and the Four Horsemen vignette lost 193,000 viewers, which is actually much better than that segment usually does. The segment with R-Truth beating on Rodriguez and the Miz/R-Truth brawl, plus the second appearance of the mute Chris Jericho lost 130,000 viewers. Okay, this is something that is noteworthy. Eve Torres in the ring, Kane’s music hitting, Ryder trying to save her, getting her in the car and trying to change the tire lost 544,000 viewers and did a 2.39 quarter. To lose that many viewers that late in the show before the main event is something significant. And John Cena vs. Dolph Ziggler and the conclusion of that segment gained 640,000 viewers, which is normal level, but it still was only a 2.84 overrun, which is the second lowest overrun figure (even the show that did a 2.71 in September hit 3.03 for the overrun), behind only the week they did Punk & Bryan & Ziggler in the trios match, dating back to 1997.
