WWE SmackDown ratings up from last week's low

[Big Red Machine]

Source: www.F4WOnline.com


By Paul Fontaine | @PaulAceFontaine | May 8, 2019 3:21 pm


Week one of the "Wild Card rules" era proved to be a small ratings success for SmackDown. This week's episode was up five percent from last week's record low number.

This followed a night in which Raw was also up. SmackDown faced weaker NBA competition and, as a result, retained a slightly higher than usual 86 percent of the Monday night WWE audience.

The show finished 11th for the night on cable in terms of total viewers. That's a better performance from last week but still worse than it would normally do, as SmackDown is usually in the top 10. The rating in the 18-49 demo was back up to fourth on cable with a 0.58 rating, trailing only sports competition in the form of two NBA games on TNT and an NHL game on NBC Sports Network.

Year-over-year, SmackDown also did a little better than it had been doing, dropping "only" 16 percent after having been down around 20 percent in recent weeks.

Miz and Mrs. was up seven percent from last week's series low, averaging 898,000 viewers on USA, directly following SmackDown.