The overnight numbers are in for Friday Night SmackDown and the third episode on Fox saw another drop in the show’s audience.
Based on the overnights, SmackDown averaged 2,441,500 viewers, which is down 15% from last week’s draft special and down 37% from the premiere two weeks ago. The audience grew from 2,390,000 viewers in the first hour to 2,493,000 in the second hour as the program went against the ALCS game between the New York Yankees and Houston Astros.
SmackDown’s biggest strength has been its hold of adults 18-34 and 18-49, where they were the top program among those demographics for the night on network programming. Among adults 18-34 they did a 0.5 in hour one and a 0.6 in hour two. In the adult 18-49 demo, they did a 0.7 and 0.8 respectively compared to a 1.4 in week one and a 1.0 in week two.
It’s worth adding, that based on the reporting of Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the audience for the premiere of SmackDown on Fox grew 13.5% with DVR+7 viewing. The first week saw an average of 3,888,000 for the live episode and 4,409,000 including DVR viewership over the next week. The DVR viewership also increased the adult 18-49 demo from a 1.4 to a 1.6 in week one.
The overnight number is based on the top metered markets with the final number that represents the entire country expected to be released on Tuesday.
Next week’s episode of SmackDown is being moved to FS 1 due to Fox’s commitments to the World Series. WWE has announced Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez in a face-to-face segment for the episode along with appearances by Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair to promote Crown Jewel.
They’ve put really weak shows for two week in a row on the new network. This is no news to me. But the FOX guys may have hit the panic button already. 37% drop in two weeks… that’s huge.
No, they just changed RAW with SmackDown, this is what happened.
There is absolutely ZERO excuse for putting this atrocious “draft” and the dull shows for the DEBUT on their new network and the following one. Than in week 3 you deliver this NOTHING show?
No Bischoff can excuse this, when everything starts and ends with one man.
If you don’t like Smackdown then just stop watching and go with AEW instead or NJPW etc.
Like you said it’s VKMs show and he’s gonna do what he always does
Sorry, but this is the stupidest and weakest excuse ever. I enjoyed SD just few weeks ago. Or at least a good portion of the show (some characters I just don’t care about and am zoning out or skipping through their segments). I’m like a broken radio here, but nothing excuses the absolute shambles of a product SD is the last three weeks. While it was supposed to be the Gates to a BOOM period.
Cancelled Sportsnet 360 and the network a couple days ago. Between the Draft and the recent competition with AEW I gave them another chance but they lost me again.
Friday at 8 is also such an awful time slot for a lot of people anyway.
Three weeks in, and there have only been two matches I wanted to go back and watch… and I saw one of them in its entirety as a GIF on Twitter.
Maybe I’m wrong for expecting good wrestling matches on free TV but, at any rate, I’m a pretty ingrained fan who has not been at all compelled to watch thus far.
Yeah, outside of habit there’s almost no incentive to watch SD or Raw live anymore. Not in a world where AEW, NXT, NWA. & Impact exist. For who? For what?
They really need to tighten things up on SD. The bloom is already starting to come off of the rose.
The talent is irrelevant. The shows themselves are horrible. Surely everyone has something better to do than waste three hours on a Monday hearing someone convince me
Ricochet is Spider-Man
Just took a look at the SmackDown roster in full. Wow, it really is quite uninspiring. Reminds me of Raw in 2018 which ended in Corbin getting blamed for everything.
Maybe they could build the whole show around Daniel Bryan and maybe Sami Zayn will be booked seriously. Sasha Banks actually winning the title and having a good run. Would require Vince having some sort of brain transplant but still…
