Source: Spoiler TV & f4wonline.com
Last night's SmackDown on Fox averaged 1.928 million viewers in the fast national ratings, up four percent from last week's overnight number. It's the best overnight viewership for the show since May 7
Viewership was steady throughout the show, averaging 1.926 million viewers in hour one and rising to 1.93 million viewers in the second hour. The episode was headlined by Roman Reigns defending his Universal Championship against Rey Mysterio in a Hell in a Cell match. The match was originally scheduled for Sunday's Hell in a Cell pay-per-view but was moved up to last night.
In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown drew a 0.5 overnight rating, up 25 percent from last week. SmackDown topped all network programming in the demo.
The final ratings will be available early next week, but this overnight number means that SmackDown should climb above the two-million viewer mark for the first time in over a month, so the advertising of the Reigns vs. Mysterio Hell in a Cell match seems to have been moderately successful. The match was announced for SmackDown the night before the show.
Year-over-year, SmackDown was down 7.7 percent in overall viewership but even in the 18-49 demo.
Here's a look at the last 11 weeks of SmackDown overnight viewership numbers and 18-49 demo ratings, along with the 10-week average prior to this week. As you can see, this week was almost identical to the recent average in both categories:
