Raw drops to its lowest viewership on the road to WrestleMania

Last night’s (Mar. 13) episode of WWE Raw saw total viewership drop to its lowest number since the road to WrestleMania 39 officially began in late January at Royal Rumble.

The show show averaged 1.71 million viewers across its three hours. It did a 0.53 rating among 18-49 year olds. Even though total viewers were down from last week’s result (1.83 million), the rating in the key demo had a slight uptick compared to last week’s 0.52. Raw finished second place on cable behind the NBA.

Here is the hourly breakdown:

Hour One: 1.78 million / .52Hour Two: 1.76 million / .58Hour Three: 1.58 million / .50

This is the point in the ratings article where I usually pick one key thing from the show, assign a disproportionate amount of the credit or blame onto it in a blatantly reductive manner, and then duck for cover. But I don’t need to do that this time, because the odd pattern you see above in the hourly breakdown is heavily influenced by the start of Daylight savings time in the USA.

This is typically what happens when the clock changes at this time of year. The first hour of Raw will be down, and the second hour will closely match or outperform it in the numbers. Here are two recent examples, if you don’t believe me.

So at least in this one instance, I don’t need to recklessly conclude that viewership dropped because Edge isn’t a draw, or that the demo rating increased because Omos is quite tall. I’m just going to shrug my shoulders and say the numbers were heavily influenced by Daylight savings time, and you can make of that what you will.

For complete results and this week’s Raw live blog click here. To read a recap & review of the night’s events click here. For video highlights of the show click here.

Numbers via Showbuzz Daily