WWE Raw Ratings For October 7: How Did The New Two-Hour Format Perform?

Two-hour or not two-hour, that is the question.

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On Monday (October 7), WWE Raw aired its first two-hour episode since 2012, a one-hour time shift on USA Network that will hold until the show moves to Netflix in January. Many in the wrestling industry have long called for the show to scale back to two hours. A live three-hour telecast is not only difficult to program, but it's also difficult to maintain an audience's continuously fraying attention.

Therefore, many pro wrestling insiders have been anxiously glued to Nielsen's TV ratings report on Wednesday (October 9), awaiting any indication that WWE's flagship program had a runtime issue—those naysayers may be onto something.

Raw pulled in 1,545,000 total viewers, a two-percent increase over the previous week, and a six-percent increase over the 2024 Q4 average. Not bad!

MORE: WWE Raw Results 10/7/24: Gunther Retains WWE World Heavyweight Championship

Even more impressive is that Raw was the #3 cable program in the 18-49 demographic despite hemorrhaging viewers to big NFL and MLB games.

And let's not forget that this episode of Raw aired two days after the Bad Blood PLE. Traditionally, the Raw shows after a PLE perform better than most. This Raw was also heavily promoted with a simmering World Heavyweight Championship showdown between Gunther and Sami Zayn, and Jey Uso's first IC Title defense, against Xavier Woods.

While it's too early to say runtime played a part in the viewership increase, it'll be interesting to see how the rest of the year's two-hour shows perform against their three-hour counterparts.

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