The Official UKFF RAW Thread...

[The Clint]

It's probably a case of most parents saying there's something on at 10 I want to watch so you can turn this crap off.

[Dirty Eddie]

WWE’s flagship show averaged 3.724 million viewers this week on February 29.

• First Hour: 3.961 million viewers (4.201 million last week)
  
• Second Hour: 3.660 million viewers (4.055 million last week)
  
• Third Hour: 3.551 million viewers (3.396 million last week
  

- Looking at that, the last hour drop-off was huge the week before with over half a million turning off. This week it was only around 100 thousand. Am I right in thinking last week's main event was Reigns/Sheamus and this week was Ambrose/ADR?

[d-d-d-dAz]

Undertaker was the top of the third hour this week. That'll have helped.

[Dirty Eddie]

Of course. Vince/Taker was in that first ten minutes of the final hour and I imagine dragged it up a fair bit. Makes sense I guess, it just seemed a huge drop last week. Is it normally that steep?

[Onyx2]

 

Source

 

Too much ring walking.

[Yakashi]

Half an hour of wrestling on a three hour and fifteen minute show. Mental. I know it's not the actual wrestling itself that draws viewers, but they still need more than that!! I'd hope for at least 75 minutes.

[AshC]

Shocked by this, I figured it would be a lot more 'wrestling' these days.

 

19 minutes of recaps jumped out most for me!

[Benno]

The Daniel Bryan speech Raw, which was one of the longer shows they’ve done had a huge third hour drop off. It did 3.9 million for both hour one and two and then 3.36 million for the third hour, Meltzer said this about the breakdown that week:

 

The big third hour drop came with older viewers.

 

By age group, the show did a 1.23 among teenagers (up 16.0 percent), a 1.31 in ages 18-34 (up 19.1 percent), 1.43 in ages 35-49 (up 6.7 percent) and 1.33 in ages 50+ (up 7.3 percent).

 

As far as who stayed for the Bryan speech, from hour one to hour three, 18-49 women dropped 16.8 percent, 18-49 men dropped 1.1 percent, teenage girls dropped 23.2 percent, teenage boys dropped 6.7 percent and 50+ dropped 15.3 percent.

 

So women were far less likely than men to have stayed late to watch the speech, even though traditionally for television, heavily emotional segments appeal greater to women.

 

 

Ignoring the casual sexism from Big Dave there, that pattern seems to be the same most weeks, it’s the older viewers and women who drop off.

 

A chunk of those people may have young kids but really, it’s a chore for anyone who isn’t a hardcore to sit through 3 hours every week. You have to wonder how many new fans are going to pick up a hobby that requires so much of your time every week of the year.

Edited March 2, 2016 by Benno

[The Gaffer]

Half an hour of wrestling on a three hour and fifteen minute show. Mental. I know it's not the actual wrestling itself that draws viewers, but they still need more than that!! I'd hope for at least 75 minutes.

Raw itself isn't a pie chart though. Perception and illusion are huge things to a TV show like this. At least to my mind I'm still percieving quite enough wrestling on Raw. The idea of wanting even more is mad.

 

It's three hours. That's not a wrestling show. It's a magazine show for your entire universe. With room for plenty of wrestling.

[Pinc]

43 minutes of bell-to-bell wrestling over a two-and-a-half-hour show (after adverts are taken out and the runover added on) sounds about right. The balance between matches and other stuff has been much improved since Fast Lane as we're on the road to StorylineMania, the one time a year when there tend to be actual stories occurring all over the card.

 

Off the top of my head I'd say there are about 5 or 6 stories that aren't just battle of the rematches going on at the moment, which is much higher than they've had for ages. Though Jericho/AJ which only just qualifies now that they've added some Dissension In The Ranks~.

 

There were times during Rollins' title reign especially where it felt like every show was 90 minutes of Ziggler bumps sandwiched between an opening promo and a beat down at the end. Would like to see what the pie chart looked like on a typical Raw from September last year. It felt fucking interminable at times.

[Supremo]

Half an hour of wrestling on a three hour and fifteen minute show. Mental. I know it's not the actual wrestling itself that draws viewers, but they still need more than that!! I'd hope for at least 75 minutes.

Absolute bollocks. The last thing Raw needs is more wrestling. I mean, can you name me a single match from this week's show that would have been improved if they had double the time they had? What you're suggesting is that either every match gets double the time or we get more meaningless matches, likely involving Stardust or some other loser. Fuck that.

 

What they need to do more of is backstage vignettes and pre-recorded promos to actually get people over. Having their current roster of chumps that nobody cares about means that however long they spend in the ring is absolutely worthless. A ten minute Dolph Ziggler match often feels like forty minutes at least. Bump yourself into oblivion. Nobody gives a shit.

 

It's not 1999 anymore. Anyone still complaining for more wresting on their wrestling show is either just saying what they think they should be saying as a smart fan, or is simply blind to what the real problems are. You got more wresting. It sucked balls. Half the reason the last two weeks have been worth watching is because Wrestlemania season has forced them to increase the amount of time they spend on storylines and less time allowing Dolph and his mates to have boring, overlong matches.

 

Give me Stephanie McMahon delivering the best promo of her career ahead of faceless wrestlers having a wrestle every day of the week.

[Onyx2]

 

Half an hour of wrestling on a three hour and fifteen minute show. Mental. I know it's not the actual wrestling itself that draws viewers, but they still need more than that!! I'd hope for at least 75 minutes.

Absolute bollocks. The last thing Raw needs is more wrestling. I mean, can you name me a single match from this week's show that would have been improved if they had double the time they had? What you're suggesting is that either every match gets double the time or we get more meaningless matches, likely involving Stardust or some other loser. Fuck that.

 

What they need to do more of is backstage vignettes and pre-recorded promos to actually get people over. Having their current roster of chumps that nobody cares about means that however long they spend in the ring is absolutely worthless. A ten minute Dolph Ziggler match often feels like forty minutes at least. Bump yourself into oblivion. Nobody gives a shit.

 

 

Totally agree; I meant to add when dumping the chart above that the amount of wrestling is about right. But now we've had our wish, and got "more" wrestling on the show - now we all want more backstage interview / promo / general getting-characters-over stuff. Even Austin bangs on about it most weeks on his podcast.

 

I bet when that wish is granted it gets stuffed up too.

[Benno]

I was on Twitter during Ziggler/Miz and saw people moaning it was so short. I couldn't imagine much worse than them two getting another 20 minutes.

[Sphinx]

The Daniel Bryan speech Raw, which was one of the longer shows they’ve done had a huge third hour drop off. It did 3.9 million for both hour one and two and then 3.36 million for the third hour, Meltzer said this about the breakdown that week:

 

 

The big third hour drop came with older viewers.

 

By age group, the show did a 1.23 among teenagers (up 16.0 percent), a 1.31 in ages 18-34 (up 19.1 percent), 1.43 in ages 35-49 (up 6.7 percent) and 1.33 in ages 50+ (up 7.3 percent).

 

As far as who stayed for the Bryan speech, from hour one to hour three, 18-49 women dropped 16.8 percent, 18-49 men dropped 1.1 percent, teenage girls dropped 23.2 percent, teenage boys dropped 6.7 percent and 50+ dropped 15.3 percent.

 

So women were far less likely than men to have stayed late to watch the speech, even though traditionally for television, heavily emotional segments appeal greater to women.

 

 

Ignoring the casual sexism from Big Dave there, that pattern seems to be the same most weeks, it’s the older viewers and women who drop off.

Is that casual sexism or just statistics?

[tiger_rick]

With the way their writers have so clearly been watching episodes of RAW from 1997 to 2001 on the Network, I wonder if Ambrose vs. Triple H will cleverly rip off that Bret Hart vs. Sid cage match prior to Wrestlemania 13.

 

I've always thought that was a really cool, clever match, with each guy's respective Wrestlemania opponent (Austin and Taker) helping their nemesis so as to make their match the Title match on the big show. It'd be really cool and could perhaps sow the seeds of an eventual heel turn for Ambrose or Roman if we saw Brock helping Dean and Roman helping Triple H, both attempting to ensure they're fighting for the belt at Wrestlemania.

 

I just think that if you're going to blatantly rip off stuff from the late 90s you might as well rip off the good stuff. Someone needs to figure out how to redo the Summerslam 97 main event finish too, because that was fucking awesome.

Wouldn't work because Ambrose already said Reigns gets the shot whatever but it doesn't necessarily have to be against Triple H.

 

Thought the opening segment was great. This Dean Ambrose is a fucking megastar. Once the matches start he's seriously average but does that matter? The Rock was great long before his work was. Austin was the biggest star in the business while his matches were kick-punch fests.

 

People seem to love Ambrose. So push him to the moon.