By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

WWE financial executive George Barrios (not Vince McMahon) said in WWE’s recent quarterly conference that he did not anticipate the Olympics impacting WWE’s business. The result of this week’s TV Ratings is either the Olympics has affected WWE, or the audience has soured on Raw three weeks into the brand split…

WWE Raw TV Ratings Tracking

August 8: WWE Raw scored a 2.05 TV rating, down 11 percent from a 2.30 rating last week.

It was the third-lowest TV rating of the year behind the historically-low 1.87 on the Fourth of July and a 2.03 rating on June 13 against the NBA Finals.

– Raw’s three hours averaged 2.911 million viewers, down 12 percent (about 403,000 viewers) from last week’s audience of 3.314 million.

It was the third time this year Raw has drawn fewer than 3.0 million viewers, following the Fourth of July and June 13 episodes.

First Hour: 2.950 million viewers
Second Hour: 2.974 million viewers (+)
Third Hour: 2.809 million viewers (-5.5% from 2H to 3H)

It marks 21 consecutive weeks that the third hour has declined from the second hour on Monday nights.

– DEMOGRAPHICS: Raw tumbled across the board in key demographics, returning to pre-Draft levels.

Adults 18-49 was down 21 percent vs. last week
Males 18-34 was down 20 percent vs. LW
Males 18-49 was down 19 percent vs. LW

Caldwell’s Analysis: Raw has one more week opposite the Olympics next Monday. Based on this week’s audience, a sub-2.0 rating is a possibility, especially since WWE has conditioned their audience to view pre-PPV shows as typically skippable. The Olympics then conclude on Sunday, August 21 (versus Summerslam), so it will be interesting to see how much of the audience Raw gets back in two weeks for the post-Summerslam Raw.