Greg DeMarco has your May 23 WWE Monday Night Raw ratings–and more importantly analysis. What does it really mean? Read and see!

We now have your ratings for the May 23 edition of WWE Monday Night Raw, and it’s a good look for WWE. Net’s start with the specifics:

• Hour #1 – 1.846 million viewers, .42 in the all important 18-49 demographic, ranked #4 among all shows for the night on cable
• Hour #2 – 1.821 million viewers, .43 demo, ranked #2 for cable
• Hour #3 – 1.530 million viewers, .38 demo, ranked #5 for cable

(Available via ShowbuzzDaily)

WWE Monday Night Raw Numbers for Nerds (like me)…

Here are your averages for Raw:

• 1.732 million viewers per hour
• .41 demo rating
• 3.6 ranking average (occupying 3 of the Top 5 spots for the night)

Let’s take a look at the change over last week, shall we?

• -71k average viewers over last week’s average of1.803 million (-3.93%)
• -.20 in the demo rating over last week’s .61 average (-.2)
• average ranking of #2 among all cable shows for the night last Monday (#1, #2, and #3)

What does it all mean, Greg?

It has to be terrible, right? a perceived 33% drop in the demo? That’s TERRIBLE.

Nope. Not at all. Factors to consider:

• Last Monday Raw was not opposed by NBA basketball or NHL hockey–and it finished #1 through #3
• This Monday saw the NBA playoffs on ABC (while on network, would still grab viewers and share from Raw), and the NHL playoffs on Turner (the NHL is doing amazing playoff numbers since moving to Turner).
• The only programming to beat WWE Monday Night Raw was live sports. They beat everything else.

While I always preach that we cannot compare network numbers to cable numbers (we can’t), it’s important to remember that live sports will still pull eyeballs from Raw

One thing to consider for next week: Memorial Day Weekend, where people are headed out of town. We might get a Shark Tank rerun, and I can expect a dip in viewership. But given the loyalty of wrestling fans, the holiday weekend might actually cause WWE Smackdown On FOX to finish #1 for the night on the network.

Another thing to consider is that when I was looking at r

Why is the ranking the most important stat to consider?

For WWE Monday Night Raw, advertisers are going to primarily look at one thing (this applies to all TV show ratings, outside of live sports): how did you finish against your competition on the same night, on the same medium. For Raw, this means all other network shows on Friday night. What you can’t do is compare to last year, or decades ago during the Monday Night Wars. No one with any actual decision making powers cares about that, so why should we?