Raw Rating Under 3 Million

IRS and I personally killed the Bunny in Willow's cabin, so I don't know what you're all going on about.

WWE would love it if everyone would believe this had anything to do with Monday Night Football. But we don't, because it's not true. History has shown that the quality of the game isn't a huge swaying factor in relation to Raw ratings. They're just hemorrhaging viewers, regardless of what teams they're matched up against. Using football as an excuse for the abysmal decline is a total cop-out, but it's exactly what WWE is going to do, because Vince McMahon is a clueless coward who has entirely lost sight of how to run a wrestling promotion. That isn't really up for debate anymore. The lack of change in correlation with the ratings prove it. The appropriate course of action is not to weather the storm. They've tried that, and it failed.

People don't like the product. Period. They're driving away casual viewers. They're driving away die-hards. They're becoming less desirable to advertisers by the second. Dipping below 2.5 should have been enough to make wholesale changes. This rating should be enough to fundamentally change every facet of how they produce television. It's alarming. It's flat out embarrassing, and it's a horrible sign for the future of professional wrestling as a viable money-making form of entertainment. Every time these reports come in, we say "this must be the new water level", but it isn't. It gets worse.

What is going to take for investors to step in and demand changes? And at that point, what is the likelihood that Vince McMahon has the mental capacity to realize that the changes need to start with him?

In the interest of fairness, networks aren't necessarily as interested in "day of" ratings anymore because of the potential for people to have DVR'd it on say Monday but not watch it until later in the week. The "ratings don't matter" part of his statement is moronic but relying solely on Nielsen numbers is archaic.

I wouldn't say the ship is sinking, that implies that they're going out of business in the next few years. As far as I know they aren't hemorrhaging money at the moment like TNA and TNA's been in business for like at least 10 years past the point where people started predicting their imminent doom. And really that's the most important thing. The USA won't pull them from their network because it's still the highest rated show on the network (I'm reasonably certain) and they still bring in decent ad revenue. As much as it sucks, the WWE is still doing decent business. The Network is still hauling in money and such. You may be frustrated with the product (I know I am, hence as I've said before, I've stopped watching the weekly TV shows outside of NXT) but it's not REALLY a sinking ship.