May 28, 2001 Wrestling Observer Newsletter: Decline in Monday night wrestling ratings
Less than two months after the biggest show in the history of the industry, the entire wrestling industry seemed to hit a panic.
The Monday night audience for wrestling has declined to a scary degree coming off the end of Nitro and folding of WCW, down to a 4.2 rating on 5/21, for the best Raw show in a long time. This number was equivalent to the audience the show used to draw the few times a year it aired from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on tennis or dog show night. The WWF not only has lost all of the former Nitro audience, as well as having dropped about 16 percent of its own core audience over a seven week period. House show business, on a strong run for the past few years, have started showing more signs of weakening than in any period in the last five years. Moreover, never in recent years had so much been said about the boring state of the WWF, with stagnation setting in.
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Dave Meltzer is the founder and lead writer on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the weekly constant when it comes to news and reviews in pro wrestling and mixed martial arts for more than 40 years. Dave also co-hosts Wrestling Observer Radio with Bryan Alvarez and had had bylines for The National, Yahoo Sports, MMA Fighting and others.