WWE Raw Rating: Is Kevin Nash's "Text-Gate" Drawing in Fans?

For the past few weeks, I have been covering the WWE and their recent Raw ratings, and while things look stagnant, there have been signs of growth of over the past few months.

Of course the starting point in all of this was Punk's "worked shoot," many weeks ago to close Monday Night Raw.

To recap, here is the quote on last week's number:

"First hour had 5,248,000 viewers. Second hour had 4,861,000 viewers. Overall number comes to a 3.3—nice bounce-back rating, but losing viewers from hour one to hour two is not encouraging..."

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This week is a little bit different because not much was announced beforehand, whereas last week was major SummerSlam fallout, with a Rey-Del Rio WWE title match already set.

Last night was a big unknown to a large group of fans.

Yes, there was likely to be more drama between Nash and Triple H as well as the next chapter in the WWE championship picture, but again, those were assumptions.

Flipping over to Monday Night Football during a commercial break on Raw, I saw the game was a blowout, so that will help out Raw big time.

Even though it is preseason (don't get me started), many fans still watch football, and with a game well out of hand, more people will flip around channels.

Outside of ESPN airing the NFL, the usual suspects were out with new shows, so it all boils down to whether the current Raw is entertaining to viewers at home.

Last week's rating being a 3.3, I would suspect a small bump. Maybe even no bump at all.

With the big mystery still going on over who sent Kevin Nash the text at SummerSlam, I think fans are starting to get more and more into the "big reveal" likely coming in a month or two.

On top of that major story, Cena was on in the beginning of the show as well as the end (main event).

Last week, he was barely mentioned all night and had just a brief run-in at the very ending of the show.

Whether we like it or not, Cena needs to be featured more than two minutes each week.

Even with all of that, I felt the mid-card stories and promo segment were a lot more useful this week than last.

That is why I predicted a small increase—either a 3.3 again or a 3.4.

The final number will be released in an hour or so, and I will update the article with that information as soon as possible...

UPDATE: Raw averaged just over 4.6 million viewers, with a little more in the second hour for a final rating of 3.0. That is a pretty big drop off from last week...not good!

Also of note is pwinsider.com is reporting that the 8/20 edition of AM Raw did a 0.85 rating with 1,092,000 viewers.

Wow! That show airs at 2 AM Sunday morning...those are "TNA Impact numbers" there, folks, for a one-hour WWE RECAP SHOW at 2 AM Sunday morning!