One of the more interesting stories of the CM Punk angle has been the WWE RAW ratings. Fans of the angle expected a blockbuster summer of RAW ratings, while the reality is much different. Even the first week of the Triple H era wasn’t enough to get fans running to their television sets Monday night.
The July 25 RAW ratings are in and all indications from World Wrestling Entertainment headquarters are a disappointment. The added drama of the new Triple H era of RAW along with the CM Punk angle, and two WWE championship matches couldn’t move the needle this past Monday night.
According to reports the, July 25 RAW finished with a 3.2 rating. The early reports show a slight drop from last week’s 3.22 RAW rating. The show overall finished with 4.8 million viewers, which was a drop from last week That isn’t what the WWE expected after promising a new WWE champion, in addition to coming off a big company angle.
I hate making excuses for low RAW ratings, yet this show does have a good one. It is not inconceivable to think that Barack Obama’s speech in the first hour took away a big chunk of viewers. It would also be consistent with the growth in the second hour, which theoretically saw fans tune in late after the speech. Quite frankly the ratings pattern makes a lot of sense.
Some are about ready to call the CM Punk angle a ratings flop. I don’t know about that. RAW ratings annually dip in the summer due to the obvious summer viewing patterns. If I was going to play devil’s advocate to the Punk critics, who is to say that the Punk angle is actually bringing in viewers? A 3.2 isn’t terrible at this time of the year. Who is to say that it wouldn’t be a 2.8 or 2.9 without the interest of the Punk angle and Triple H storyline?
Another defense of Punk is that he wasn’t advertised for the show. I wrote about this last week when recapping the July 18 RAW rating. It is kind of hard to expect CM Punk to bring in millions of viewers when he and the WWE continued telling fans that he wasn’t going to be on the show. Maybe the bigger CM Punk fans tuned out the last two weeks with the promise that their Second City Savior wasn’t going to be there?
Like many of you, I can’t imagine anyone not being excited about the current direction of the WWE. The last few weeks of RAW has turned the show into must-see television. For me, RAW hasn’t been must-been TV in a long time. I can’t imagine anything other than Steve Austin or The Rock creating more interest to move the RAW ratings.
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Eric G.
Eric is the owner and editor-in-chief of the Camel Clutch Blog. Eric has worked in the pro wrestling industry since 1995 as a ring announcer in ECW and a commentator/host on television, PPV, and home video. Eric also hosted Pro Wrestling Radio on terrestrial radio from 1998-2009. Check out some of Eric's work on his IMDB bio and Wikipedia. Eric has an MBA from Temple University's Fox School of Business.
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