Even with C.M.Punk advertised, Raw couldn't overcome the college football national championship game last night.
Michigan vs. Washington drew the second largest number for a cable show in the last 11 months with 25.05 million viewers, a combination of 24.2 million on ESPN, 598,000 on ESPN 2, 150,000 on ESPN U and 30,000 on ESPN Deportes. The game was up 45 percent from last year's championship game that had 17.22 million viewers.
We don't have the standings for the night but Raw undoubtedly beat everything on cable not on ESPN, doing 1.46 million viewers and a 0.44 in 18-49.
The show was built around the return of Punk, who was in the opening segment with Drew McIntyre and not brought back the rest of the show. The Punk segment did 1.76 million viewers and 0.52. Nothing else on the rest of the show came close.
From last week, which went against a stronger game in hour one but a weaker game in hours two and three, Raw was down 16 percent in viewers, down 27 percent in 18-49, and down 36 percent in 18-34. While a drop should have been expected, that much of a drop shouldn't have been, but showed the level of interest in the game.
From one year ago against the college football championship game, it was down 14 percent in viewers, down 11 percent in 18-49 and down 20 percent in 18-34. That is a vast difference from previous weeks where Raw and all WWE programming was way up with younger viewers as compared with one year earlier.
The hours were:
- 8 p.m. 1.54 million viewers
- 9 p.m. 1.49 million viewers
- 10 p.m. 1.37 million viewers
