Ratingz

I saw this on the Death Valley Driver board and was wondering what your take was. I don't get The Observer but I've seen these ratings eb and flow blurbs posted from there on the DVD board quite a few times and they're pretty interesting. Also, feel free to post for blog fodder. Do you think this will be used as any sort of indictment on CM Punk and the new "geek revolution" and if so, is it justified or just jumping the gun? Also, it looks to me like every segment lost viewers except Cena's so it's hard to pinpoint one thing wrong with the show. Reminds of a line from Disco Inferno's shoot where he said he got bitched out by Nash for going two minutes too long and his segment losing to the WWF in a quarter and Disco reminded him, “Kevin, we’re losing ALL the quarter hours.”.

The big story here was the main event. The overrun for the C.M. Punk & Zack Ryder & Daniel Bryan vs. Alberto Del Rio & The Miz & Dolph Ziggler match gained 59,000 viewers. That’s almost impossible given people tune in to see the following show, which basically meant wrestling fans must have been tuning out in droves (they were during the first half of the match but then started gaining at 11 p.m., but hardly gained anything). The main event did a 2.67 rating (2.55 for the first half of the match) which had to be, probably by far, the lowest rated main event on Raw of this year and maybe the lowest since 1997 for a non-holiday show in the regular time slot.

I’m not the least bit shocked.  The guys in the main event have all been booked to lose consistently before winning their titles, so why should fans buy into them as legitimate main eventers?  This is WWE’s whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing, where they don’t think that anyone but Cena & Orton can get over as top guys, so they make sure no one does.  This is really a situation where a legitimate separate brand would do a world of good, because with Ziggler and Ryder getting hot on RAW but not being real main event guys, you could send them to another show where they’d instantly be treated as a big deal and could main event and get out from under the shadow of Cena.  They probably could still do that, in fact, since Orton is mainly on RAW at this point anyway.