You people who claim RAW sucked pre September 1995, I doubt are aware that The Monday Night War changed the way the business was operated & generated revenue. It was Bischoff, not McMahon, who deserves credit, for making Monday night into wrestling night. Before 1995, there was a wrestling show on Monday night, no different than on Saturdays & Sundays. Very quickly after the debut of Nitro, Monday night became wrestling night, which it still is to this day.
Prior to the debut of Nitro, WWF had historically rarely worried that much about ratings. The business model was all about house show attendance, PPV buys & merchandise sales - television was just the vehicle to drive those revenue streams. Unsurprisingly, live events especially represented the majority of WWF’s revenue.
Raw mostly consisted of stars beating non-stars. During his entire reign, Diesel wrestled five times on Raw. Back then, in addition to highlighting their big names, TV time was used to advertise local house shows & the major PPVs. The best way to see WWF Champion Diesel perform was to go to the non-televised match at the arena when they came to town.
WCW made Nitro the focal point of the company, & not the house shows or PPV. Nitro was based on stars vs. stars. Dream matches of the era, like Hulk Hogan vs. Sting or Hogan vs. Lex Luger, that would usually be saved for PPV, were instead made Nitro main events . Nitro held its own with Raw from the start. The combination of expanding to two hours & the introduction of the Kevin Nash & Scott Hall, led to WCW dominating the ratings each & every Monday & eventually, WWF had to respond.
It wasn't until September 2000 that cable channel television rights fees became a major money generator, as a contract signed with TNN, The National Network (which is now Spike TV), increased the annual rights fee for Raw from $5.5 million that USA was paying to $28 million, plus WWF also controlled a percentage of the ad revenue for the show. Raw, the highest rated show on cable television, was by itself strong enough to make TNN from an also-ran network with an 0.7 prime time ratings average into a borderline top ten network.