Going against major NBA competition, the taped edition of SmackDown Live drew its lowest viewership since going live on Tuesdays in July 2016.
Tuesday’s episode from England averaged 1,827,000 viewers on the USA Network. It was a 5.4% drop from last week’s number and beat the previous Tuesday night low set on April 30th.
Unlike Raw on Monday, SmackDown faced heavy competition with the NBA Draft Lottery at 8:30 pm Eastern averaging 4,427,000 viewers on ESPN followed by the Golden State Warriors vs. Portland Trail Blazers game that attracted 7.3 million viewers. There was also an NHL playoff game between Boston and Carolina that did 1.9 million viewers.
If you compare this week’s episode to one year ago, which was also taped in the U.K., SmackDown dropped 20.5% but also went against a bigger NBA playoff game in 2018.
Because I turned off the show when the IIConics were arguing with Saxton.
I can leave the show on if it’s a boring match because I can just look at my phone, but if the commentary is irritating and SmackDown in particular is very irritating with Graves and Saxton arguing like they should just fuck and get it over with coupled with the shrill voices of Billie Kay and Peyton Royce joing that…who wants to leave that on?
I think the commentary teams on both shows are also a factor in driving away viewers…I don’t want to listen to people power talking over each other and not paying attention to the thin that’s on screen.
Should go back to a two man team…Cory and Phillips and SmackDown and Cole and Renee on Raw…sorry Byron, but hey there’s always the kick off show and backstage interviews.
And call the match, let the crawl underneath plug the other products.
Visual irritants can be ignored, but auditory irritants need avoidance to be ignored and that’s not good for a TV product.
Renee is horrible…she forces Cole to cut her off because she can’t form a sentence for long periods of time.
She hasn’t shown any signs she was made for commentary on any show I’ve heard her on, he it Mainevent, NXT, Evolution, Mae Young Classic and Raw…quite frankly, Beth Phoenix is infinitely better at it than she is.
But if they insist on having her on commentary…being on air with Cole without a color guy nailing her with zingers is better than nothing…Cole gets a bad wrap, no one is better than him doing the WWE style…no one.
I’m going to fix the commentary conundrum since I’m a solutions oriented kind of guy, move Renee to NXT with Mauro, they’re friends from her old job and had a good report. Put Beth on Raw with Cole because they andhad good chemistry during the Mae Young Classic and Cory and Phillips on SmackDown…Byron can do kick off shows and do goofy backstage interviews like Coach because he’s better suited for that and Percy can do NXT kick offs instead of Sam Roberts since that audience use seemed to turn on him
You mean it’s bad to have the same guys on 2 nights in a row? Who’d a thunk?
Seriously I don’t want Roman, Miz, Elias, Shane on back to back nights. Ending the brand split can be ok, but you need to highlight more talent not less.
Hyperbole is obvious…but if that’s the attitude, just stop.
Get some help.
That’s just mental…I didn’t hate watch walking dead when I stopped being into it, I didn’t look for excuses like “maybe I’ll see some cool kills” “but I like Daryl”… I stopped watching and I don’t even care if they spun off shows and are going to make more of it…I was done and staying that way. I found a new zombie show on Netflix called black summer…and I didn’t go “hopefully this one will make Walking Dead better”.
Dude, it’s a joke. Chill. I am not condoning alcoholism as means to watch WWE. But with ratings that bad, it cant hurt to offer a few drinks…
But, we all know what the response to poor ratings will be. More authority, more chinlocks, more head locks, less logical storytelling
Dude, I stated it was an obvious joke because of it’s hyperbolic nature…keep up.
Hate watching a show you only criticize and use silly excuses I poised in regards to Walking Dead to justify still watching is the platform I used your joke to promote my initial thoughts on weird ass rasslin fans who seem to hate the thing they claim to love.
I haven’t watched a full raw or smackdown in years, same with the walking dead. I’ll catch segments every once in a while out of curiosity, but then quickly remember why I’m not actively watching.
So we out here slandering the benefits of alcohol?!? Y’all can both kick rocks!
To paraphrase noted American philosophizer Homer Jay Simpson: Here’s to beer, the solution to (and cause of) most of our problems.
But seriously, Raw is a grind. So whatever you need (as long as it’s legal & doesn’t hurt anyone) to get through it w/your fandom intact…More power to you!
