Welcome to another edition of The Wrestling Post. This time we take a look at ratings for the second week of Total Divas, ratings for this year’s Wrestlemania special and a big milestone for the WWE.
Total Divas ratings up
Believe it or not, the new WWE reality series featuring WWE women talent is up from its debut episode. The second episode which aired Sunday hit an average viewership of 1.52 million viewers with a 0.7 share.
Keeping up with the Kardashians, the “lead-in” for Total Divas was 4th overall in cable ratings for the night with an average of over 2.7 million viewers for a 1.4 rating for its time slot at 9:00pm.
Payout Take: So much for lead-in help as Total Divas lost over 1 million viewers after the Kardashians went off the air. Still, its ability to carry over 1.5 million viewers and do better than its debut is good news for the E! network and the WWE. Although the content has been widely criticized, it has a following. We’ll see how they can maintain this momentum.
Wrestlemania 29 Special on NBC
F4WOnline (subscription required) reports that last Saturday night’s Wrestlemania special on NBC garnered an average of 1.92 million viewers which is down 30% from last year’s airing. “Wrestlemania: The World Television Premiere” was tied for second in network ratings to CBS’ 48 Hours. The show on CBS scored 4.92 million viewers compared to Wrestlemania which tied for second with ABC’s Zero Hour.
Payout Take: I’ve always found the Wrestlemania specials in August very interesting considering the event takes place in April. The decrease in ratings may be due to lack of general interest and promotion for the special. It still did boost ratings for that time slot on NBC but that does not say too much for a Saturday night in August.
WWE reports hitting 20 million unique viewers
The WWE announced that it hit 20 million unique viewers for its programming this past week. Variety reported the WWE accomplishment. The 20 million was spread across five WWE programs this past week (Raw, Smackdown, WWE Main Event, Total Divas) which includes the NBC special on Wrestlemania 29. Nielsen compiled the numbers for WWE and it was based on the number of unique viewers as opposed to the average viewership which is usually reported. F4WOnline (subscription required) clarified that unique viewers would be any viewer that would tune into a WWE program for at least six minutes.
Payout Take: While one might argue that the viewership numbers could be skewed to reflect more viewership, the fact remains that WWE television is popular and knows how to grab its demo. The WWE chose the week it would have an extra program (which was on NBC) as the week it asked Nielsen to compile its viewership so the 20 million number may not be a representative number. However, WWE’s anchor program, RAW on USA scored 8 million unique viewers on Monday which is more than the Wrestlemania special.
I bet if I watch each of the 5 programs. I would have been counted 5 times. That hardly makes me 5 unique viewers. You know most of their fans watch each show. Very misleading numbers.
Bs: you are a carny http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=carny
“Misleading numbers “hahahaha….what’s the difference with these numbers and that of meltzer…whom you defend…
Btw….IF this are official numbers from a publicly listed company then it’s more accurate then meltzers unofficial UFC numbers lol
Bs is ashamed to admit that fake fighting is more popular than real fighting.
Is that why the UFC has killed the WWE PPV model? Is that why WWE is about to take all their PPV’s off except WrestleMania and put them on cable? Is that why the UFC has a better network Tv deal?
Let me say this a different way. wwe has more viewers than the ufc.
Interesting that when i say mma you retort wirh ufc numbers as if bellator and wsof don’t exist.
You do the same thing counting WWE is the entire Pro wrestling industry. Why not ROH? WWE doesn’t have more viewers than the UFC. They are just able to put their fake stars out there every night and bring in their entire fan base. The UFC doesn’t put their big stars on free tv and they cant have then go on every night either. When they did put a big name on free tv we saw the ratings and it smashed WWE ratings. Even Chael vs no draw Bisping was able to beat anything WWE does. IF the UFC put all its stars on one show like WWE does it would be no contest.
BTW I bet you think WWE has more viewers than Baseball just because some individual regular season games do less ratings. Strong logic you have there!
You boiled it down to one org so i did the same. i wasn’t aware that roh was on network tv regularly, and tna slipped my mind. ufc doesn’t have original footage every week of their “stars” like wwe does. Baseball isn’t even on year around. you are a fool. Wwe is more popular than the ufc based on weekly ratings.
If ufc were so successfull their numbers would be public. they just want to hide the fact that they are trying to tunnel out from under a mountain of debt.
Its interesting that you swear by nielson when it is convenient for you. but in cases like this it is flawed.
Why would their numbers be public? WWF never released their numbers until they became a public traded company, that was when they were doing massive numbers during the attitude era.
BrainSmasher is looking at WWE having fewer PPVs as a bad thing, but really it shows that they are adapting to the changing times. The PPV format for wrestling isn’t going to work anymore and they are making the necessary adjustments to allow the business to continue into the future. Better than waiting until it is too late and your audience has been killed off before making a change.
I’m surprised no one has brought up illegal streaming of ppv events as a cause for reduced ppv buys. fyi: calamity jaes off of halsey in portland shows ufc ppvs on a single tv if you are ever in town haha.