TV viewership: AEW Rampage debut, SmackDown tops two million again

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Originally published at TV viewership: AEW Rampage debut, SmackDown tops two million again

The debut edition of AEW Rampage averaged 740,000 viewers and registered 396,000 in the 18-49 demographic, per Brandon Thurston.

AEW’s new 60-minute Friday night series premiered on TNT featuring Dr. Britt Baker retaining the AEW Women’s Championship in her hometown, and Christian Cage winning the IMPACT Championship from Kenny Omega.

When Dynamite aired on Friday nights during the NBA playoffs, the first hour of the program averaged 562,000 and 276,000 in 18-49 over four weeks, per Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s data. This was also going against the NBA playoffs, which Rampage didn’t have to counter.

It does set the bar for this Friday’s follow-up edition of Rampage, which is billed as “The First Dance” featuring the largest attendance for an AEW event as they run at The United Center in Chicago.

Friday Night SmackDown finished with 2,084,000 viewers and 746,000 (0.58) in the 18-49 demographic, also coming from Brandon Thurston.

It was the fifth consecutive edition of SmackDown topping two million viewers and was highlighted by a Face-to-Face segment involving Roman Reigns and John Cena and a contract signing between Bianca Belair and Sasha Banks.

The number was down slightly from the week prior that averaged 2,169,000 and 792,000 in 18-49 for a show that did not feature Cena.

Since returning with live fans, SmackDown has averaged 2,149,000 and 768,000 in 18-49 over five weeks.

This Friday’s SmackDown takes place from Phoenix, Arizona on the eve of the SummerSlam event.

In Canada, SmackDown didn’t air in its regular slot on Sportsnet 360 due to Tennis coverage. The show streamed live on the Sportsnet Now streaming app and replayed on SN 360 from Midnight – 2 a.m. Eastern with an average viewership of 40,000.

AEW Rampage did not air on television in Canada and streamed on TSN Direct and through the TSN website, so there is no available data. This week’s episode of Rampage will stream live and air on a one-hour delay at 11 p.m. ET on TSN 2.

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Showbuzzdaily is back up and running Rampage was #3 behind 2 NFL games that aired on NFL Network. This Friday there’s a Chiefs Cardinals game airing on ESPN at 8, don’t ask me why but NFL Network gets lower ratings like NBA TV while games that air on ESPN/TNT for basketball get bigger numbers so I expect Smackdown to suffer because of it and Rampage at 10 will air when the 3rd stringers are in.

I know John and Wai avoid Twitter drama but it was funny to see Meltzer say on Saturday Smackdown doing 2.5 million was inflated because of preseason preemptions and all the usual suspects jump on him for hating WWE just to see he was actually right and they lost 400,000 from overnight to final numbers

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Oh darn — looks like AEW has lost the Friday Night War. Guess they will have to pack up and move the show to Saturday or Thursday or something other than 10pm on Friday. Shucks.

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I love the way @johnpollock and @wai0937 handle themselves on Twitter. No need to keep sniping back and forth at idiots. At times it makes Dave looks petty and unprofessional even though he has a right to defend himself. His recent dig at Ryan Satin for instance saving something up for months was a little much.

Prefer the way our guys handle themselves with class

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To be fair, it seems like there are hundreds of Twitter accounts just waiting to jump all over Dave at anything he says.

Coupled with the fact that listeners of 83 Weeks, and Something to Wrestle, both just all over him due to Bischoff and Prichard’s constant attacks on their podcasts, I can understand his occasional lashing out.

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Nah the key to enjoying life is to quote tweet every idiot with 6 followers and an anonymous avatar and break down how demographics work. Every. Single. Day.

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No I get it. Even though I have a much smaller following on Twitter I’ve had people attack me asking all sorts of things such as claiming I am paid by vaccine companies, that guy I’m not really a doctor and even one guy who wanted to debate me about where I went to medical school trying to prove that it was on the back of a matchbook or something (I went to UofT)

I realized after a while that it’s best just not to engage anybody like that. If somebody has an actual comment that a response may help I will of course respond, but if they’re just trolling or antagonizing if you don’t feed them they tend to starve.

I respect Dave tremendously and he’s quite a wealth of knowledge but I think sometimes by not responding to every moron out there he would save himself a lot of stress and not come across as bothered by these things which in turn leads to more people antagonizing him when they see they can get a response from him

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As somebody who has RT’d you, I’ve seen it first hand.

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I completely understand why he wants to, but there is a reason why the old clichés are:

Learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.

I’m guilty of that myself sometimes though, so on some level I cant blame Dave.