SmackDown's overnight figure hits a new low on Fox

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Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2020/07/04/smackdowns-overnight-figure-hits-a-new-low-on-fox/

The overnight figures for Friday Night SmackDown reveal that the show was hit hard posting a number that would represent their lowest viewership on Fox to date.

The show averaged only 1,777,000 viewers on the overnight figures and 0.4 in the 18-49 demographic. Both would represent their lowest numbers on Fox since the show launched on the network last October. The previous low mark was 1,885,000 viewers for the May 1st edition that did 0.5 in the main demo.

With the show airing on Friday this year compared to Tuesday in years past, and on the 4th of July weekend, that could have played a factor in viewership being down to such a degree this week.

In the 18-49 demo, NBC’s airing of Dateline was the top network program while SmackDown tied a replay of ABC’s Shark Tank and a re-airing of The Wall on NBC for second place.

The final number reflecting the entire country will be released Monday.

The first hour averaged 1,797,000 and dropped to 1,756,000 in the second hour.

The show was advertised around Sheamus delivering a “toast” to Jeff Hardy, an Intercontinental title match between AJ Styles and Drew Gulak, and Michael Cole interviewing Matt Riddle.

On Thursday, WWE taped two episodes of SmackDown including next week’s episode, which is advertising the following matches:
*New Day vs. Shinsuke Nakamura & Cesaro for the SmackDown tag titles
*Bayley & Sasha Banks vs. Alexa Bliss & Nikki Cross

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Empty arena show on July 4th weekend while missing a tone of talent, to be honest I’m surprised its not lower.

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Or maybe because their product is shit.

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Ya…that was implied when I said empty arena show. Compared to what it can be, wrestling sucks right now.

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I meant it is shit, regardless of the empty arena shows.

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Whether this is true or not, I don’t think overall quality of the product is why this particular edition of Smackdown did a poor number.

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I agree with John. I thought the first hour was really good.

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I havent watched it yet so I cant say, but I did glance at the feedback thread and it seemed to be pretty positive.

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Just watched it last night, I cant see how anyone could call that episode “shit”. It was a very good episode of Smackdown. Full disclosure, I fast forwarded through the Bliss/Bayley match as well as the Kofi/Nakamua match since I refuse to watch pointless matches, but everything else was good.

Morission vs Riddle was excellant, AJ/Gulak was good, Bayley and Banks really seem to be hitting their stride, and I even thought Hardy showed some fire. Good show, show quality was definitely not reflective of the quality but rather the circumstances.