WWE News: Raw Superstar Shakeup suffers slight loss in viewership
What's the story?
WWE's Superstar Shakeup began this week with Monday Night Raw and the acquisitions the flagship brand made during the show held the fans' attention.
The Raw edition of the Superstar Shakeup averaged 3.622 million viewers and was down nearly 300,000 viewers from the Raw after WrestleMania, due to some competition from the NBA Playoffs.
In case you didn't know...
Raw kicked off with Jinder Mahal being revealed as the first draft pick from the 2018 Superstar Shakeup and was followed by a United States Championship match that was won by Jeff Hardy.
Aside from the United States Championship match, the biggest matches on the show were Sasha Banks vs Bayley, "Woken" Matt Hardy and Bray Wyatt vs The Revival, and the 10-man tag team match in the main event.
The heart of the matter
Raw normally dominates the cable ratings, but the first round NBA Playoff games dominated the television ratings last night. However, it is important to note that WWE had greater viewership in the second hour of the program.
The following is the hourly breakdown of the April 17 edition of Raw per ShowBuzzDaily:
Hour 1: 3.634 million
Hour 2: 3.754 million
Hour 3: 3.479 million
Viewership increased heading into the second hour with 120,000 fans tuning in, presumably because of the title change that began the show, while the third hour would end up losing 275,000 viewers.
Despite the decrease, Raw hasn't hit a viewership lower than 3 million viewers since the January 15th edition of the program. Also, the 2018 Superstar Shakeup averaged a significantly higher viewership than the 2017 Shakeup, which generated 3.429 million viewers.
What's next?
Lesnar returns to WWE progamming next week and could have another confrontation with Roman Reigns.
With their WrestleMania match being vociferously rejected by the fans, Lesnar's return might not have a great enough affect on viewership to maintain their numbers.
Author's take
This week's show was bound to do well, with a Superstar draft/shakeup immediately following WrestleMania week.
WWE's still doing great in the ratings and hopefully the new Raw Superstars can help the flagship show maintain the momentum.