The Final WWE RAW Rating Is In + Lawler’s WWE Future

— The Monday, January 12th edition of WWE RAW scored a final cable rating of 2.71 (2.7), according to Nielsen Media Research. The 2.71 final draw marks a decrease compared to last week’s show, which delivered a 2.8 final number.

With the stiff competition this week from college football (which drew 33.25 million viewers on ESPN), the number is considered a positive, and one that many are attributing to the return of Daniel Bryan and the heavily promoted announcement of “Macho Man” Randy Savage being inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame.

The hourly breakdown in terms of viewership for this past Monday’s RAW is as follows:

Hour One: 4.10 million viewers
Hour Two: 3.90 million viewers
Hour Three: 3.72 million viewers

— As noted recently, WWE switched up their television announce teams, with RAW now featuring Michael Cole, JBL and Booker T, and SmackDown with Michael Cole, Jerry Lawler and Byron Saxton. For those curious, the announce team for WWE pay-per-views, for the time being, will still feature Cole, JBL and Lawler.

The feeling within WWE is that the move of Lawler to SmackDown is the beginning of WWE phasing him out of the picture, as the company is age-conscious when it comes to their on-camera broadcasters, particularly for their key programs.

The idea of phasing Lawler out has been floating around for a while, however when he suffered a heart attack, it was pretty much a lock that they couldn’t make the move just yet.

When WWE moved SmackDown from Friday’s to Thursday’s, which begins this week on the SyFy Network in North America, it seemed like the perfect excuse to finally pull the trigger and make the transition of having Lawler move from RAW to SmackDown.

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