5 ways RAW can boost its ratings
RAW is WWE's flagship show. In the late 1990s, RAW used to hit the 6 million viewers mark regularly. Nowadays, the red brand is struggling to reach even half of it consistently. After a peak during the Wrestlemania season, the ratings of RAW declines until Summerslam, where it sees a sudden spike. The viewership declines again after Summerslam until Wrestlemania season and the cycle repeats forever.
Owing to the ongoing National Football League (NFL) and the season premiere of various TV shows, this week's RAW stooped from 2.62 Million viewers to just 2.35 Million viewers, the lowest view count in recent history. This is 0.11 million lesser than the previous record of 2.46 Million viewers set on July 9th episode. Even the return of fan-favorite faction Shield and legends like the Undertaker, Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H is not helping. Vince McMahon would definitely not be happy with this.
With that being said, let us take a few steps WWE can take to boost it's flagship show's rating, especially during the NFL season.
#5 Stop repeating the same formula
After SummerSlam 2018, almost every episode of RAW followed a set of rules - Roman Reigns comes to the ring to cut a promo. Someone interrupts him and makes an announcement for the main event. This segment is followed by some lower card matches that have no direction whatsoever. Elias and Ronda Rousey follows this. Finally, the shield gets involved in the main event.
People get bored of this formulaic approach. Before Extreme Rules 2018, there were 3 RAW episodes that literally had the same card - The June 18th, June 25th and the July 2nd episodes of RAW were very identical to one another.
Even though the Shield reunion is supposed to draw fans in, it has driven many fans out. RAW has become focused only on the Shield and the rest of the card is in limbo.