RAW & SMACKDOWN RATINGS PLUMMET

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>While down from last week's day after SummerSlam number, which also had tougher competition, Raw did its second best number since April 17th last night with 3.30 million viewers.

>Raw beat everything on cable, and also beat both Fox and CW programming, although it always beats CW programming.

>The audience was down three percent, and last week's show had stronger news interest and a preseason NFL game on ESPN as competition. But the audience was expected to drop from the day-after-SummerSlam levels.

>As far as a change from the usual pattern, the first hour was the highest rated instead of the second, as has been the case most of the summer. There was a third hour drop of 201,000 viewers, but that's not out of the ordinary.

>The three hours were:
>8 p.m. 3.38 million viewers
>9 p.m. 3.36 million viewers
>10 p.m. 3.16 million viewers

>Tuesday night's SmackDown on the USA Network did just 2.455 million viewers, the lowest number for the show since July 4th.

>It was down nine percent from last week's post-SummerSlam episode, and year-over-year the show was down 13 percent from the same week in 2016.

>It was a strong night for the cable news networks as SmackDown finished only ninth overall in total viewers on cable for Tuesday. It usually finishes in the top three, though the show was first in the 18-49 demo with a 0.76 rating.

>John Cena's move to Raw was likely the reason for the dip in SmackDown's numbers and could also partially explain why Raw's ratings have held up over the last two weeks. With Cena in the mix, SmackDown usually retains between 80 and 85 percent of the Raw rating from the previous night. That percentage fell to below 75 percent this week.

>Cena was also off of last week's show, but viewers may just be figuring out now that he isn't coming back to SmackDown any time soon. Next week's show is being built around a first-time meeting between Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura -- so it will be interesting to see if that helps boost ratings.