Monday Night RAW Viewership Increased June 19th
Jessica Wilkins According to WrestlingInc, this week's episode of Monday Night RAW (June 19th) saw a substantial viewership increase of 22% from last week's RAW (June 12th). This week's episode of RAW drew in 3.102 million viewers - the first time RAW has averaged over 3 million viewers in several weeks. If you were unaware, the June 12th edition of Monday Night RAW saw the lowest viewership of 2017 so far totaling in at just 2.542 million viewers.
This week's episode of Monday Night RAW featured a few noteworthy moments, including the revelation that Big Cass was the attacker of Enzo Amore, ending their tag team and friendship.
The night also saw Roman Reigns divulge his announcement at the beginning of the show confirming that Reigns has intentions of going after the Universal Champion at SummerSlam.
However, most notably, this week also featured the return of the "Monster Among Men" Braun Strowman, who very swiftly set his sights on his former rival Reigns.
To give some perspective on the RAW viewership this week, the first hour of the broadcast drew 3.075 million viewers, the second hour drew 3.201 million viewers, and the third and final hour drew in 3.029 million viewers. RAW was the #1 show on cable that night (June 19th).
The recently improved RAW viewership goes to show that the WWE are not completely slipping into irrelevancy - all they they need to do is provide their fanbase with engaging content like they did this week. For the past while, the WWE's product has been fairly stale (especially on RAW) which is the main contributing factor in why the viewership for both RAW and SmackDown have been so low for the episodes following WrestleMania. RAW's Universal Champion Brock Lesnar barely appearing on the show following his win over Goldberg at 'Mania 33 just compounded things.
The return of Braun Strowman, the impending push of Samoa Joe and the potential of having another breakout heel star in Big Cass are helping improve the RAW viewership which had previously slipped into all-2017 lows. It will be very interesting to see how the WWE goes about developing these major story-lines moving forward, and if they can manage to keep viewers watching and engaged with their product.
