Monday night’s episode of Raw on the USA Network averaged 2.836 million viewers, down five percent from last week’s total. For just the third time in 2017, it was up in the year-over-year ratings, although last year the show fell on July 4th, traditionally one of the worst nights of the year for TV numbers.
The show averaged 2.825 million viewers for the first hour. It climbed to 2.912 million for the second hour, then fell back to 2.78 million in hour three.
SmackDown Live Rating:
For a comparison, Raw was down 14 percent last year when the show fell on the July 4th holiday. SmackDown likely held up a little better than expected due to the highly publicized return of John Cena.
The show was up in the year-over-year ratings as the July 7th, 2016 episode of SmackDown did 2.241 million viewers for the taped show on Thursday night.
Here’s a look at SmackDown ratings in 2017 as compared to Raw from the same week. As per usual, the show retained between 80 and 90 percent of the Raw audience from the previous night:
