Report: Raw Rating Drops Significantly; WWE Unhappy?

The ratings for Monday's Raw are coming in, and, frankly, they're pretty awful.

Over at PWInsider, Mike Johnson notes that the flagship show fared very badly indeed against the New Orleans Saints taking on the Seattle Seahawks: "There's no good way to put this - The NFL wrecked Raw this week in the ratings." 

The game, shown on ESPN, pulled in a whopping 15 million viewers.

Johnson goes on to break down the rating for the three-hour Raw, mentioning it may very well be the worst numbers in well over a year.

"

Raw drew an audience of 3,541,000 overall, down almost 500,000 from the previous week. This week's Raw audience was the lowest audience for WWE's flagship series since Christmas Eve 2012 and we'd have to go all the way back to October 1, 2012 to find a non-holiday edition of Raw that garnered such a small audience.

"

He goes on to note that, unsurprisingly, WWE brass are greatly dismayed by these figures:

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Needless to say, WWE isn't happy. Even worse, WWE lost the audience that did tune in over the course of the night, starting out with 3,616,000 viewers in hour one, falling to 3,560,000 in the 9 PM hour and then finally to 3,447,000 viewers in the final hour.

"

Of course, it would be very easy for the company to heap all the blame on the NFL game, and undoubtedly, it was a significant factor.

But still, that doesn't allow the company off scot-free.

As TvByTheNumbers reports, all three hours of Raw were also beaten in the all-important 18-49 demographic by Love and Hip Hop 4,  Chrissy and Mr. Jones 2 and Fast N Loud.

What does all this mean?

Well, it's clear that John Cena vs. Randy Orton just isn't taking off as a program.

(No real surprise since that feud peaked in 2008.)

The heavily hyped unification bout doesn't feel like that big of a deal, either, even if Cena has been doing some of his best promo work in ages. It feels like simply another storyline.

Will there be ramifications over this number? Or will Vince McMahon just chalk it up to bad competition and continue in the current creative direction?