10:57 AM EST

Plus bold comments about USA vs Disney

www.wrestlingnewsdesk.com reporter Anna Elizabeth Anderson posted an excellent article in THE POST CHRONICLE this morning regarding USA Network's competition with The Disney Channel and how the Monday Night Raw 15th Anniversary Special helped USA President Bonnie Hammer's goals of making USA the number one cable network.
 
You can read the entire article here: http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212119561.shtml.
 
The story, which also features an analysis by www.wrestlingnewsdesk.com editor Matthew Cooper, states the following:
 
 
WWE Monday Night Raw Special Scores Big For USA Network
 
 
USA President Bonnie Hammer's amazing track record of success has been bolstered by the ratings for WWE Monday Night Raw's15th Anniversary Special.
 
www.wrestlingnewsdesk.com   reports that the 3-plus hour event grabbed a 4.1 household average rating, with almost 5.8 million viewers on average from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. on Dec 10, according to Nielsen Media Research data.
Included within that total was an all-important 2.93 million viewers in the 18-to-49 (years old) age demographic.

"USA Network has wanted to bring back stars from the previous eras of Raw for a long time," commented Wrestling News Desk editor Matthew Cooper, "according to multiple sources in WWE, Bonnie Hammer is a big believer in bringing back Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker, D/X, and making it special to the viewers."

WWE suffered a bit of an embarrassment heading into the special when it advertised The Rock on internet banner ads, but Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson declined the offer to appear on the show.

But the rating took away all the sting from the fact The Rock didn't want to participate. WWE announced that the 15th anniversary show also ranked as the top Raw special on USA ever among total viewers, persons 18 to 49, and adults 25 to 54, beating the “Homecoming” show when Raw returned to USA after a 5 year run on SpikeTV.
What makes this all so significant is that USA is averaging 2.67 million total viewers in primetime through Dec. 9, which guarantees it the No. 1 slot for the second year in a row in the category of ad-supported basic-cable nets.
 
As of December 9, The Disney Channel, which doesn't accept advertising, is slightly ahead of USA Network, with  2.70 million primetime viewers. Hammer, who is President of USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel (home of WWE's watered-down offering of 1990's worldwide phenomenon ECW) for NBC  Universal, told "Variety" that  USA could overtake Disney Channel in the last three weeks of the year.
 
Hammer said USA Network is almost playing in a different arena than its ad-supported cable competitors. On the one hand, USA has distanced itself from No. 2 TNT, former home of WWE's nemesis Monday Nitro, by about 466,000 total viewers for 2007. On the other, "Variety" points out USA is right on the heels of broadcast net the CW, which edges it in primetime by only about 104,000 viewers.