Vince McMahon Reveals How He Plans To Improve WWE Raw's Ratings

Since March 16, all episodes of Monday Night Raw have been broadcast from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. The company has struggled to retain viewers throughout the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and their flagship show has only averaged 1.853 million viewers. Raw also recorded it's lowest ratings in history on July 13 as the episode only attracted 1.561 million viewers.    

When Vince McMahon was asked about the falling ratings back in April, the boss didn't blame COVID-19 but said viewership had dropped because the company had moved a lot of new Superstars to the main roster and it takes time for them to get over with the audience at home. 

McMahon has changed his mind since then, as during the WWE annual stockholders meeting, he admitted the pandemic has affected TV viewership across the board. The company is still looking to improve ratings, however, by running adverts for Raw during other sports programming and by promoting their "deep roster of charismatic talent."

The Chairman of WWE said: "We have a 30-plus year track record of creating compelling characters and engaging a variety of audiences, and we obviously remain confident we can continue that with our collective ability, even in the most challenging environments with no live audience.

"The media echo system obviously has changed. We change with it. Our engagement metrics across platforms are understandably and obviously — however, the importance of linear programming is paramount in all of our businesses — we consistently have seen year-over-year increases in a variety of digital metrics and engagement. And positive trends have continued, even during COVID.

"Conversely, TV viewership trends have been negatively impacted by COVID, obviously, and the lack of a live audience. We are still nonetheless the number-one television show on USA [Network] and consistently the number-one broadcast show on Fridays among key demos.

"We expect a combination of valuable promotional inventory from our TV partners with the return of sports events programming. And a deep roster of charismatic talent will have a positive impact on viewership over the long-term."

H/T: Wrestlenomics