Whoa, whoa, whoa...
I just took another look at Raw. I began my recording at 8:00pm sharp, so my counter was accurate.
Reading this, I'm highly amused:
"All the post-match with Bryan & Kane with the hugging lost 169,000 viewers and that’s at the 10 p.m. hour, doing a 2.78 quarter. That’s disastrous at that time of the show, as usually that’s growth and then people tune out. That’s the second time they’ve done the big long drawn out hugging spot in a key time slot and both times it’s bombed."
Um... no. Or, as Daniel Bryan might say, "No! No! No!"
The Bryan/Kane "overrun" and that is what I am calling it, because that is essentially what it was--an overrun from the 9:45pm-10:00pm quarter hour--lasted, at most, three and one half minutes past 10:00pm. What followed that? A tedious "Be A Star" video package with Big Show telling kids to not be bullies and be nice to one another, and a big, long commercial break until about 10:08pm or so, at which time Randy Orton started to come out for the Orton/Tensai match, which concluded at 10:17pm, or thereabouts, overrunning from the 10:00pm-10:15pm quarter hour into the 10:15pm-10:30pm quarter hour.
That makes this "analysis" of the next quarter hour's "failing," or whatever one wishes to call it, all the more amusing:
"Randy Orton vs. Tensai lost 150,000 viewers."
Um... what? As I just stated, Orton/Tensai went into the 10:00pm-10:30pm quarter hour by... a whopping two fucking minutes. Who writes this shit?
As for the 10:00pm-10:15pm quarter hour, is it really such a risky proposition to make the assumption that the primary cause for the ratings hemorrhage was the overlong, boring "Be A Star" video package and lengthy commercial break, rather than the 210 seconds (or so) of Kane and Bryan doing their "Hug It Out" shtick after the tag team match with Air Truth? And maybe, just maybe, nobody gives a damn about Tensai. But even so... Blaming Orton/Tensai for the loss in the 10:15pm-10:30pm quarter hour is simply hilariously off the mark, too, as that match concluded at approximately 10:17pm. That leaves thirteen whole minutes in that quarter hour to be held in judgment and/or analysis.