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WWE Raw (also stylized as Monday Night Raw and since August 29, 2011, identified on air as WWE Raw SuperShow)^[4] is a sports entertainment television program for WWE that airs on the USA Network in the United States. The show's name is also used to refer to the Raw brand, in which WWE employees are assigned to work and perform on that program, the other program and brand being SmackDown. The show originally debuted in the United States on the USA Network on January 11, 1993.^[3] It remained there until 2000, when Raw was moved to TNN, later known as Spike TV.^[5] In 2005, the show was moved back to the USA Network.^[6] Since its launch in 1993, Raw continues to air on Monday nights. Raw is generally seen as the company's flagship program due to its prolific history, high ratings, weekly live format, and emphasis on pay-per-views.^[7]

It is the fifth longest-running weekly wrestling show in history. The longest running wrestling shows are WCW Saturday Night (28 years), WCW WorldWide (26 years), Wrestling at the Chase (24 years) and World of Sport (20 years). WWE Monday Night Raw is the longest running weekly TV show of all time.

Since its first episode, WWE Raw has been broadcast live from 197 different arenas in 165 cities and towns in nine different nations. Including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Afghanistan in 2005, Iraq in 2006 and 2007 for specials Tribute to the Troops, Germany in 1997, Japan in 2005, and Italy in 2007. The show was recorded in Mexico for the first time in October, 2011.

WWE announced on May 17, 2012 through various online outlets that Raw will continue forward as a three-hour broadcast following the 1,000th episode on July 23, 2012, a format that has previously been reserved for special episodes.^[8]

Show history[link]

1993–2002[link]

Original format[link]

Beginning as WWF Monday Night Raw, the program first aired on January 11, 1993. It screened on the USA Network for one hour. The original Raw broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small audiences or at large arena shows. The Raw formula was very different than that of its predecessor, Prime Time Wrestling. Instead of taped matches, with studio voice overs and taped chat, Raw was a show shot to a live audience, with angles as they happened. The first episode featured Yokozuna defeating Koko B. Ware, The Steiner Brothers defeating The Executioners, WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels defeating Max Moon and The Undertaker defeating Damien Demento. The show also featured an interview with Razor Ramon.^[9]

Raw originated from the Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios, a small New York City theater, and aired live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing every other week. From early 1994 to September 1999, Raw was shown live on one Monday and then the next day (Tuesday) next Monday's Raw was taped. This meant that Raw was live one week and taped the next.

The storylines and characters during the early years of Raw still had a healthy dose of the old Federation "gimmick-heavy" style. For instance, events occurred such as Irwin R. Schyster tearing up Tatanka's headdress, the various "Undertaker sightings" in mid-1994 and characters like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, Doink the Clown, or Bob "Spark Plugg" Holly.

Raw, uniquely in its day, covered the unexpected, exciting moments, a prelude to "the Attitude Era", in which it coined Raw as "Uncut, Uncensored, Uncooked."^[10] Some of those moments include Razor Ramon losing a match unexpectedly to The Kid or Marty Jannetty beating Shawn Michaels to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship. Raw also was the first WWF television program of any kind to show footage of Lex Luger bodyslamming Yokozuna at the USS Intrepid.

Vince McMahon, Rob Bartlett and "Macho Man" Randy Savage served as the original hosts of Raw.^[10] Sean Mooney conducted the interviews and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan also helped contribute. On April 19, 1993, Rob Bartlett made his final appearance on the program. He was dropped from the broadcasting team and was replaced by Bobby Heenan the following week, who remained until December 6, 1993, when Gorilla Monsoon kicked him out of the WWF. In reality, this was a storyline between Monsoon and his close friend Heenan, who decided to leave the World Wrestling Federation in order to lighten his travel schedule and because he did not want to take a 50% paycut. Raw also originally featured the Raw Girls; ladies who would parade signs around the ring in between matches that often used the term "Raw" in a pun (as in "Open Wide and Say Raw", among others). After about a year, Raw moved out of the Manhattan Center and traveled to various regular Federation venues in the United States. In mid-1995, Raw briefly showcased "Dok Hendrix and the Raw Band"; a musical performance in-between segments on the show.

The Monday Night Wars and Raw is War[link]

In 1995, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) began airing its new wrestling show, WCW Monday Nitro, live each week on TNT.^[11] Raw and Nitro went head-to-head for the first time on September 11, 1995. Due to Raw's taping schedule on several occasions, WCW Vice President Eric Bischoff, who also worked as an on-air authority figure, would frequently give away the results of WWF's taped Raw shows on the live WCW show. Some fans also looked at Raw taping results on the steadily growing Internet; this caused the ratings of the taped Raw episodes to decrease.

Until September 1999 WWF Raw broadcast live every other week to save costs, but ratings and pay-per-view buy-rate increased, allowing them to justify doing a weekly live show.

At the start of the ratings war in 1995 through to mid-1996, Raw and Nitro exchanged victories over each other in a closely contested rivalry. Beginning in mid-1996, however, thanks primarily to the nWo angle, Monday Nitro started a ratings win-streak that lasted for 84 consecutive weeks, ending on April 13, 1998.^[11]

On February 3, 1997, Monday Night Raw went to a two-hour format,^[11] as the Attitude Era was starting to come in full stream in the WWF. In an attempt to break the momentum of what had turned into ratings domination by WCW's competing Monday Nitro, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) was brought in as Jerry Lawler challenged ECW on February 17, 1997.

In an episode where Raw returned to the Manhattan Center, the challenge answered on the following week's show with Taz, Mikey Whipwreck, Sabu, Tommy Dreamer, D-Von Dudley, and The Sandman. ECW owner Paul Heyman did a call-in interview on Raw the week after that.

WWF Raw is War Titiantron used from December 13, 1999 - March 25, 2002, there were many variations of the design in that time.

Throughout 1997, further controversial elements emerged with Raw and WWF programming. Memorable moments included Bret Hart cursing profanely at the crowd after losing a Steel Cage match, with commentators apologizing for his foul behavior, before he proceeds in major brawls with Sid, The Undertaker, Steve Austin, and briefly Shawn Michaels. Some of the most notable moments cites the profusely intense feud with The Hart Foundation against Michaels and Austin, which saw Raw develop a memorable episode in which Michaels and Austin beat The British Bulldog and Owen Hart for the WWF Tag Team Championship, and during their post-match attack on Michaels, Austin physically charged a disabled Bret Hart to ward them off. Other events saw the new black street gang Nation of Domination formed, and Michaels D-Generation X "racial graffiti" storyline designed to "implicate Bret Hart's 'The Hart Foundation'", and the "XXX Files" series.

On March 10, 1997, Monday Night Raw underwent a reformatting. The first hour was still known as "Raw", the second "The War Zone", the 2 hour block together was named "Raw Is War". The March 17, 1997 episode featured a heated Bret Hart/Vince McMahon ringside altercation (that unknowingly foreshadowed the Montreal Screwjob) with profanity normally not heard on television. Brian Pillman did a series of "XXX Files" segments with Terri Runnels, which further "pushed the envelope". These segments ended prematurely with the September 29, 1997 episode of Raw, after the death of Pillman on October 5, 1997 due to hereditary heart problems.

After WrestleMania XIV in March 1998, which featured Mike Tyson as a ring enforcer, and Shawn Michaels final match up until 2002, the WWF regained the lead in the Monday Night Wars with its new "WWF Attitude" brand, led in particular by rising stars Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H and Mankind. The classic feud between the villainous WWF Chairman Vince McMahon (who was re-imagined and re-branded from the color commentator into the evil corporal chairman character Mr. McMahon after the real-life Montreal Screwjob incident) and fan favorite Steve Austin caught the imaginations of fans. The April 13, 1998 episode of Raw, headlined by a match between Austin and McMahon, marked the first time that WCW had lost the head-to-head Monday night ratings battle in the 84 weeks since 1996.

While Raw was taking a new approach to programming, Nitro began producing lackluster programming with repetitive storylines. Older stars such as Hogan and Nash frequently occupied the main events, while younger talent such as Rey Mysterio, Jr., Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, and Eddie Guerrero, Chavo Guerrero, Jr, Lance Storm and Shane Helms were not given opportunities to advance, and the only newcomers elevated to main-event status at this time were Bill Goldberg and Diamond Dallas Page.

Meanwhile, on Raw, fans were immersed in the feud between WWF owner Vince McMahon and Steve Austin. New talent such as Triple H being the new leader of the D-Generation X (DX) faction, Mankind and The Rock were elevated to main event status on the WWF's program. Superstars such as Kane, Kurt Angle, Val Venis, Goldust and the like were coming through the ranks and exposing the WWF as territory where new talent can ascend unlike the WCW counterpart. Matters were so heated between the two programs that, when both shows were in the Hampton Roads area on the same night (Raw in Hampton, Virginia, Nitro in Norfolk, Virginia), DX was sent to film a "war" segment at the Norfolk Scope where they berated WCW and interviewed fans on camera who stated that they received their Nitro tickets for free (presumably in an attempt by WCW to pack the arena to capacity due to low ticket sales).^[12]

On January 4, 1999, Mick Foley, who had wrestled for WCW during the early 1990s as Cactus Jack, won the WWF Title as Mankind on Raw. On orders from Bischoff, Nitro announcer Tony Schiavone gave away this previously taped result on a live Nitro, and then sarcastically added "that'll sure put some butts in the seats" consequently resulting in over 600,000 viewers switching channels to watch Raw. This was also the night that Nitro aired a WCW World Heavyweight Championship match in which Kevin Nash blatantly laid down for Hulk Hogan after Hogan poked him in the chest. The next week, and for months after, many fans in the Raw audience brought signs which read, "Mick Foley put my ass in this seat!" On September 27, 1999, Mick Foley helped WWF Raw achieve some of its highest ratings ever with a segment featuring himself (as Mankind) and The Rock. The segment called "This is Your Life" included Mankind bringing out people from The Rock's past, such as a home economics teacher, gym teacher and old high school girlfriend. The "This is Your Life" segment remains one of the highest rated segments in Raw viewership history, with an 8.4 rating.

The end of the Wars[link]

A new television contract with Viacom led to changes in WWF broadcasting. On September 25, 2000, Raw moved from the USA Network to TNN (which later became Spike TV).^[5]

WCW's sharp decline in revenue and ratings led to Time Warner's sale of the company to the WWF in 2001. The final edition of Nitro aired on March 26, 2001. The show began with Vince McMahon making a short statement about his recent purchase of WCW and ended with a simulcast Raw on TNN and Nitro on TNT with an appearance by Vince's son Shane McMahon .^[13] Shane interrupted his father's gloating over the WCW purchase to explain that Shane was the one who actually owned WCW, setting up what became the WWF's "Invasion" storyline.

The RAW IS WAR logo and name were retired in September 2001, following the September 11 attacks and sensitivity over the word war, and because the Monday Night Wars were "over".^{[citation needed]}

2002–present[link]

Brand Extension[link]

In early-to-mid-2002, WWF underwent a process they called the "Brand Extension".^[13] WWF divided itself into two "de facto" wrestling promotions with separate rosters, storylines and authority figures.^[13] Raw and SmackDown! would host each division, give its name to the division and essentially compete against each other. The split was a result of WWF purchasing their two biggest competitors, WCW and ECW. The brand extension was publicly announced during a telecast of WWF Raw on March 25, 2002, and became official the next day. The March 25 episode was the final Raw to use the Attitude era depiction and the last to use the theme song "Thorn In Your Eye".^[14][15]

The TNN/Spike TV Version of The Raw Modern Titantron used from April 1, 2002 until September 26, 2005

Wrestlers became show-exclusive, wrestling for their specific show only. At the time this excluded the WWE Undisputed Championship and WWE Women's Championship, as those WWE titles would be defended on both shows. In August 2002, WWE Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar refused to defend the title on Raw, in effect causing his title to become exclusive to SmackDown! The following week on Raw, General Manager Eric Bischoff awarded a newly instated World Heavyweight Championship to Raw's designated number one contender, Triple H. Because the WWE Undisputed Championship was now SmackDown! exclusive it was no longer seen as "undisputed". Following this, the WWE Women's Championship soon became Raw-exclusive as well. As a result of the Brand Extension, an annual "draft lottery" was instituted to exchange members of each roster and generally refresh the lineups.

WWE Raw claimed to have earned the distinction of having the most original episodes of any fictional weekly program on August 2, 2005 when it broadcasted the 636th episode. It was said to have taken the place of Batibot, which held that distinction.

Return to USA Network[link]

The USA Network Version of the Raw modern titantron set that was used from October 3, 2005–January 14, 2008.

On March 10, 2005, Viacom and WWE decided not to go on with the agreement with Spike TV, making it so Raw and other WWE programs on the network would cease when their deal expired in September 2005. On April 4, 2005, WWE announced a 3-year deal with NBC Universal to bring Raw back to its former home, the USA Network, with 2 yearly specials on NBC and a Spanish Raw on Telemundo.^[6] On the same week as Raw's return to the USA Network, Spike TV scheduled Ultimate Fighting Championship's live Ultimate Fight Night in Raw's old timeslot in an attempt to go head-to-head with Raw.^[16]

The show's first night back on USA was billed as the "WWE Homecoming" and featured the return of former WWE Champions such as Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, Triple H and Vince McMahon along with cameos from legends such as Roddy Piper, Jimmy Hart, Jimmy Snuka and Harley Race. Also, it featured a 30 minutes Iron Match between Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle.^[16] WWE Homecoming was three hours long — the second longest an episode of Raw has ever run in its 12-year history. USA also showed Raw Exposed, an hour of the best moments of Raw during its previous run on USA. WWE announced that Raw received its highest ratings in three years, gaining close to six million viewers.

The following week, Vince McMahon fired Jim Ross for not helping after Steve Austin gave him and his entire family the Stone Cold Stunner. Jonathan Coachman, the second analyst at the table, took over Ross's duties as play-by-play for two weeks until former ECW announcer Joey Styles was hired.

On the May 1, 2006 edition of Raw, Joey Styles announced he was quitting (kayfabe). His vacating of the announcer position set the stage for Jim Ross to return to Raw's commentary booth, thus ending the storyline where Ross got fired by Linda McMahon. This freed Styles to become a commentator for the ECW brand when it launched in June.

In Canada, after an 11 year run on TSN, Raw moved to rival sports broadcaster The Score after it was announced that TSN would be carrying Monday Night Football for the 2006 season. The Score claimed that unlike TSN they would never preempt Raw, however that promise only lasted a few months. Then in 2007, The Score started airing the show with a 15 minute tape delay. The first 15 minutes of the hour contains a countdown pre-show recapping the previous week's events.^[17]

During the September 25, 2006 episode of Raw in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the opening of Raw suffered a blackout. Spotlights were the only lights running in the house, thus the opening match (between Lita and Candice Michelle) was contested in the dark. Power in the presentation was later restored. Another similar moment happened back on May 26, 1996 in Florence, South Carolina for WWF In Your House 8: Beware of Dog, when a major thunderstorm hit the Florence Civic Center causing major chaos for the PPV. That Tuesday, Beware of Dog, returned to North Charleston, South Carolina to finish out three matches that were not shown because of the lost power feed.

That October, Raw held a three-hour season premiere called the "Raw Family Reunion", where the Raw brand debuted a new logo and theme song, Papa Roach's "...To Be Loved". The episode also featured talent from the SmackDown! and ECW brands. Later that month, on October 23 Raw aired its 700th episode, according to the WWE making it the longest running weekly entertainment show, without a hiatus, in television history.^[13]

On June 25, 2007, Raw was scheduled in Corpus Christi, Texas to be a three-hour special memorial show for the storyline death of the Mr. McMahon character. Two weeks earlier, the show had broadcast an angle in which Mr. McMahon was murdered by a bomb planted within his limousine. The 'Mr. McMahon' tribute was cancelled on the day it was due to air after the real life death of Chris Benoit and his family. The show then became a three-hour tribute to Benoit. What made this tribute different from others (e.g. Eddie Guerrero and Owen Hart) was that the show had no original matches and no live audience. Instead, the three-hour show aired highlights from the WWE DVD 'Hard Knocks: The Chris Benoit Story', and a selection of Benoit's most famous matches. Several wrestlers paid tribute in the form of real interviews about him, and Vince McMahon broke character to address the viewers about what had happened. However, when the facts of Benoit's death came to light, WWE pulled this episode from international markets which aired Raw on a tape delay basis. Several channels announced the episode was being withheld for legal reasons. A substitute Raw, hosted by Todd Grisham from WWE Studios, was created featuring recaps of John Cena's WWE Championship victories, mainly the ones that had occurred over the past year. The episode started with a message from Vince McMahon which originally aired on the June 26 edition of ECW. Some countries that received WWE programming up to three weeks late had all Chris Benoit matches edited out. The WWE even removed all Chris Benoit matches and interviews from the WWE 24/7 service.

In December, Raw celebrated its 15th anniversary in a three-hour spectacular on the USA Network with the returns of Steve Austin, Rob Van Dam, The Godfather, Steve Blackman, Howard Finkel, Ted DiBiase, Eric Bischoff, Marty Jannetty, Gangrel, Trish Stratus, Lita, Sunny, Molly Holly, Hulk Hogan and Mick Foley (as Mankind) among others.^[13] Along with several reunions of former tag teams and also included a 15-man "15 Years of Raw" battle royal. The Raw 15th Anniversary DVD was also released which featured some of the most memorable moments in Raw history.

Switch to HD - "Codename: WWEHD"[link]

The Raw version of universal WWE entrance set introduced on January 21, 2008 for WWE's high-definition broadcasting debut.

WWE began their 2008 year with a new HD set, which consists of more than 1,000,000 LEDs. The introduction of this new set retired the old set, which was used from April 2002 to January 2008. Raw's first show in HD was held in the Hampton Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. That June, the World Heavyweight Championship returned to Raw after CM Punk used his Money In the Bank contract for an impromptu title match, defeating SmackDown's Edge.

On September 8, 2008, Raw announced that a "talent exchange" was started between ECW and Raw, allowing their respective talent to appear and compete on either brand. This is similar to an earlier "talent exchange" between SmackDown and ECW. On November 3, 2008, Raw celebrated its 800th episode with a three-hour episode. The actual 800th episode aired on September 22, 2008.

In 2009, at No Way Out that February 15, Edge won the World Heavyweight Championship in Raw's Elimination Chamber match, thus making it a SmackDown exclusive title and giving SmackDown two top tier championships.^[18] As a result of the 2009 WWE Draft in April, WWE Champion Triple H was drafted to the Raw brand, while the World Heavyweight Championship moved to the Raw brand after Edge lost the title to John Cena at WrestleMania XXV.^[19] SmackDown would regain the World Heavyweight Championship at Backlash (2009) when Edge defeated John Cena to win the championship.^[20] In addition, SmackDown and Raw would exchange both women-exclusive championships with Raw gaining the WWE Divas Championship and SmackDown gaining the WWE Women's Championship.^[19] Also, SmackDown and Raw exchanged the WWE Intercontinental Championship which is now exclusive to SmackDown and the WWE United States Championship which is exclusive to Raw Brand, for the first time ever.

On June 15, 2009, McMahon announced on a special three-hour edition of Raw that he had "sold" the WWE Raw franchise to Donald Trump, who appeared on-screen to confirm it and declared he would be at the following commercial-free episode in person. WWE issued a press release on the scripted sale while the USA Network later issued a statement confirming the "sale" as part of a storyline. The statement was issued in response to multiple news sources having mistakenly reported the event as legitimate. Due to the mistake, on the day following the announcement, WWE's stock on the New York Stock Exchange notably fell. Despite USA Network's acknowledgment that the sale was fictional, Randy Katz, a securities lawyer with Baker & Hostetler, commented on the Fox Business Network that a probe by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission against WWE and USA Network owner General Electric "certainly is a possibility."^[21] The next week, Vince McMahon repurchased Raw from Donald Trump and announced that a "Guest star" initiative originally introduced by Trump in response to the position of General Manager being vacant would go in effect on June 29. Each weekly guest host is usually either a WWE Hall of Famer, a former or returning talent, or other celebrity. The guest host or hostess assumes the role of a brand General Manager, serving as Raw's authority figure for the day. The following year, it was announced that with Vickie Guerrero (and subsequently Bret Hart) becoming the new full time GM, the guest stars (while continuing to appear) would no longer have booking power.^[22]

In 2010, TNA Impact!, which normally airs on Thursdays, went head to head with Raw in a three-hour live broadcast. This would be the first time since March 2001 that two major wrestling promotions would go head-to-head in a Monday night ratings competition. TNA promoted the debut of Hulk Hogan leading to the broadcast.^[23] WWE countered by announcing the return of Bret Hart, who had not appeared with the company since the Montreal Screwjob in 1997.^[24] The ratings showed that, much like the first Monday Night War, Raw came out on top, averaging 5.6 million viewers while iMPACT! was watched by more than 3 million viewers for the opening hour, though towards the end of the show the viewership declined to 2.2 million viewers.^[25]

On March 8, 2010, Impact! permanently moved to Monday nights to compete head-to-head with Raw.^[26] After declining ratings, Spike executives announced that starting April 5, Impact! would air an hour earlier than Raw.^[27] However Impact! was moved back to Thursdays as the 'New Monday Night Wars' resulted in Raw getting better ratings and audience of TNA getting reduced.^[28] Since then on April 19, 2010, many of the WWE Raw superstars were stranded in Belfast due to the ash cloud from Eyjafjallajökull (a volcano in Iceland) hovering over most of Europe and causing many flights to be put on hold. Former ring announcer Lilian Garcia announced that night while the SmackDown roster took part in production of the Raw episode. The following month on May 17, 2010, Raw aired its second overall commercial free episode from the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.^[29]

That summer on August 30, 2010, Raw aired its 900th episode, SmackDown superstars and NXT rookies also appeared on this milestone episode. It featured the Undertaker and Bret Hart were scheduled to wrestle for the first time in almost 14 years, but, before that could take place, the Undertaker was taken out by the Nexus and Kane. That November, Raw went "Old School" for one night with the old ring and titantron designs. This episode featured WWE Legends "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, Mae Young, The Million Dollar Man, Ron Simmons, The Iron Sheik and many more. Mark Henry briefly returned to his "Sexual Chocolate" gimmick in honor of Raw going "Old School".

RAW Supershow set

Since August 29, 2011, the SmackDown brand roster has been part of the Raw television program along with the Raw brand in what is now referred to as the Raw SuperShow.

On April 1, 2012 at WrestleMania XXVIII, Team Johnny's team had won the match against Team Teddy's team thanks to interference of Eve Torres, thus resulting John Laurinaitis becoming the permanent General Manager of both SmackDown and Raw therefore removing the title of "interim general manager".

Production[link]

As of November 16, 2009, the theme song for the Raw brand is "Burn It to the Ground" by Nickelback.^[30] Prior to this, the theme song for Raw was "...To Be Loved" by Papa Roach, which had been used since October 9, 2006 and "Across The Nation" by The Union Underground which was used from April 1, 2002 to October 2, 2006. The rap outro of "Thorn In Your Eye" featuring Scott Ian of Anthrax was the theme song from 1998 to March 25, 2002.

Since March 10, 1997, broadcasts of Raw were split into two hours and given hourly names for television ratings purposes, with the first hour being referred to as Raw is War and the second as War Zone by the show's on-screen graphics. However, as of October 1, 2001, the first hour has been referred to as Raw and the second as Raw Zone by the show's on-screen graphics. However, both hours are known as just "Raw" on-air. On May 17, 2012, WWE and USA Network announced that Raw would switch to a permanent three hour format beginning with the 1,000th episode on July 23, 2012.^[8]

The original set of Raw featured a standard twenty foot by twenty foot WWF/WWE-style ring with the ropes colored in American-style red, white, and blue. The ring posts and ring apron were blue. The mats on the floor were originally black, but, were changed to blue when Raw first moved out of the Manhattan Center. A simple portal with a neon-lighted World Wrestling Federation logo served as the entrance-way. In late 1993, the ring apron was changed to feature a WWF logo in red, white, and blue on two sides with a white logo on the other two sides with "World Wrestling Federation" stitched beside it. In 1995, the entrance-way was changed to feature large letters that spelled "RAW", with the "A" featuring a video-wall in the center. After the program was rebranded as Raw is War in 1997, the "RAW" letters were replaced by a large projection-style screen, named the "TitanTron" with a long steel ramp leading down to the ring.

By April 1997, the ring posts were changed from blue to black, as were the turnbuckle covers and mats outside the ring. The ropes were originally colored red and black, but, were quickly changed to all red; all being changes that were reflected also on subsequent WWF broadcasts for years afterwards. The ring apron was also changed to a black design with "RAW IS WAR" in red and white on all four sides. By 1998, the TitanTron entrance-way adopted the new "WWF Attitude" logo at the portal as did the turnbuckle covers inside the ring. The metal security barriers surrounding ringside were replaced by black-padded walls. By 1999, a new TitanTron was designed with two additional projection screens on either side, the USA Network logo at the top (which was changed to the TNN logo after the network switch in September 2000) and the WWF.com logo at the bottom. By 2001, the logo at the portal was changed from a static prop to another projection screen. After September 11, 2001, the Raw is War logos and nomenclature were retired and the ring aprons were redesigned to read simply "RAW." After the brand extension of 2002, the Raw set was drastically altered with a new parallelogram shaped TitanTron, a new logo on the ring aprons (two of which reading "RAW" in the new logo and two reading "WWE.com"), and the relocation of the broadcast booth from ringside to near the entrance (though it would be moved back to ringside in 2005). In 2006, the Raw logo was changed again and was reflected on the ring aprons.

On January 7, 2008, WWE announced that all brands (Raw, SmackDown and formerly, ECW) would be broadcast in HD, codenamed "WWE HD" starting with Raw on January 21. WWE invested an estimated $20 million on new recording and broadcasting equipment to prepare for the move, as well as new pyrotechnics and lighting. The move replaced the Raw, SmackDown and ECW sets with a new state of the art set shared by all brands. The stage has been altered since 2008, but most of the stage stays the same.^[31][32] In 2008, the black ring posts were retired in favor of a silver color with the Raw logo adhered to them, though, it was soon also retired in favor of just a basic white. The security walls outside the ring were adorned with a WWE logo at the four corners, which was later changed into a WWE HD logo. In 2010, the red ring ropes were finally retired after thirteen years and replaced by an all white scheme, which were also applied to the ring posts, as well.

Special episodes[link]

On-air personalities[link]

Champions[link]

• Note - The Tag Team and Divas Championships can be defended on both Raw and SmackDown. Currently the Divas Championship is held by SmackDown Diva Layla.

Authority figures[link]

Commentators[link]

^ , Mathews became the alternate color commentator on Raw beginning December 27, 2010 due to Lawler's increased in-ring schedule (Lawler would continue as commentator when he was not wrestling). On March 14, 2011, Raw began using a full time three man team with Cole announcing from his own separate table ("The Cole Mine"). Ross has also returned to the broadcast table since making his broadcast return at WrestleMania XXVII and the four announcers worked in rotating three man shifts. This ended on the May 23, 2011 edition of Raw when Michael Cole returned to the normal announce table. However, Mathews still serves as an alternate commentator for Raw if any member of the announce team is unable to continue with their duties.

^ From November 1997 until July 1998 Jim Ross served as play by play commentator for both hours of Raw, with the Michael Cole/Kevin Kelly tandem (later just Cole) as color commentator for the first hour (Raw is War), with Jerry Lawler taking over for the second hour (The War Zone).

^ Filled in for Jerry "The King" Lawler, who was recovering from injury.

Ring announcers[link]

Recurring segments[link]

A.M. Raw[link]