WWE RAW Rating; Did The Commercial Free Gimmick Help?

WWE RAW finally bounced back in the ratings, although Monday's number did not even compare to the last commercial-free offering.

According to PWTorch.com, RAW posted a 3.44 cable rating off hours of 3.37 and 3.50. The rating jumped up more than ten percent from last week's 3.05.

Among total viewers, Mediaweek says the show did 4.866 million in hour one and 4.959 million in hour two (65 minutes) for a net average of 4.914 million viewers.

The adults 18-49 rating was a 1.8, off hours of 1.7 and 1.8.

Last year's special, which was the first episode under Donald Trump's "ownership," averaged a 4.50 rating with 6.8 million viewers. To its credit, this year's show did go head-to-head with the Lakers-Suns NBA Playoffs game, which averaged a 3.0 adults 18-49 rating and 7.112 million viewers.

I never really got all the big hype about commercial free shows. Maybe that's just because I change the channel to another program during the commercials so I'm never bored

The thing is that they usually pull off all the stops to entice viewers to stay glued to the show. I've watched a few bits of the show on YouTube and the commercial spoofs were hilarious. Edge vs Christian wasn't bad at all either.

It's like they're only working hard to write good shows when there's something special to hype. Not even the PPVs are being taken seriously except for Wrestlemania and perhaps Summerslam.

I loved Raw from start to finish, the commercial spoofs were hilrious, I thought Edge vs. Christian was great, can't wait to see them go on PPV, and I marked like crazy when Taker showed up. I was very excited when Bret won the US Championship, it was cool seeing TDB with Virgil at ringside. The only 2 things I did not like about Raw was Buzz Aldrin and the Diva tag match.

The last thing I was expecting was to see the actual Virgil to show up. I knew they were looking for someone to fill the role but I didn't expect to see Virgil himself!

TDB got Virgil to be his "Virgil", that was awesome. I watch Raw week in a week out, so, the no commercial thing did not get me to watch, I would have watched anyway. I did however love the format. It obviously gave them more TV time to work with and that made the guest host thing a bit more tolerable.