Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: Lana, ratings, Raw, wrestling, wwe

WWE Raw Ratings Plummet Without Lana in Main Event

The ratings and viewership for WWE Raw were down this week thanks largely to a much lower presence of WWE Superstar Lana on the show. For the Season Premiere of Raw, viewership fell nearly 100,000 people thanks to a Lana-less main event. The 18-49 demographic number also tumbled with only a single Lana segment on Raw. Raw was ranked 4th, 6th, and 7th for the night on the ratings charts at Showbuzz Daily.

WWE Raw Viewers Want Lana

Last week, Lana was featured in three segments on Raw, including the main event. This week, Lana featured in just one segment, a women's championship match against Asuka, that was not the main event. Making matters worse, the match was merely a lead-in to another segment, with Lana tapping out in under a minute. After that, Shayna Baszler and Nia Jax came out so that Jax could put Lana through a table. This led into a four-way women's tag match that Lana wasn't even involved with. As you can imagine, this didn't go over well with Lana's massive fanbase, and as a result, far fewer people watched Raw this week.

Raw viewership was down about 80,000, from an average of 1.855 million viewers last week to just 1.776 million viewers this week. The first hour of Raw drew 1.806 million viewers with a .56 in the 18-49 demographic. The second hour drew 1.835 million viewers with a .50 in 18-49. The third hour, by which point everyone was already very upset because of the Lana finish, drew just 1.689 viewers with a .49 in the 18-49 demographic.

The Bottom Line 'Cause Chad Said So

Okay, so all of The Chadster's loyal readers know that if there's one thing The Chadster isn't into, it's criticizing WWE. But when the fans really get behind a superstar like Lana and tune in in huge numbers like last week, I have to say; I'm not sure burying Lana on Raw last night was the best decision. I know it's not The Chadster's place to talk about booking like that, but it's just how I feel. I hope WWE can forgive me.

That being said, I did discuss my feelings on this with my wife, Keighleyanne, and she got kinda defensive. "Chad, why are you so obsessed with Lana?" she asked me. "Do you think she's pretty?" And The Chadster said, "of course not. I just think she's a really good wrestler, and this isn't a crush at all." Then she said, "Fine, whatever, Chad." And I said, "why do you keep emasculating me, Keighleyann?! I'm a man, god damn it!" But she had already stopped paying attention to me and went back to texting with Gary.

The thing is, I think that WWE driving away Lana fans was a bad move because there was so much great stuff on WWE Raw last night that people missed out on. For example, The Chadster is a big fan of Elias's music. I'll definitely be buying his album next Monday and bumping it in the Miata whenever I drive to church or the grocery store. And then there was that epic, hilarious comedy when Tucker introduced his tag team partner, El Gran Gordo, and it turned out it was just Otis in a Luchadore mask. Did you know "El Gran Gordo" means "The Big Fat Man?" Comedy gold.

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