SmackDown Live Live SmackDown Discussion thread, September 17th, 2021: The Demon continues to set sights on Roman Reigns’ Universal Title

[Chris]

Source: f4wonline.com

Friday night's SmackDown averaged 2.243 million viewers on Fox, down 5.9 percent from the previous week's episode that took place at Madison Square Garden and included an appearance by Brock Lesnar. It's the fourth-highest audience for the show since WWE returned to live touring in July.

SmackDown finished fourth among network programming in terms of total viewership, which is better than the show typically does. Even more impressive is that most of Friday's programs were first-run as opposed to the summer repeats SmackDown has been up against in recent weeks.

In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown drew a 0.58 rating, down 10.8 percent from the previous week. SmackDown was bumped from its usual top spot among the networks by CBS' Big Brother, which did a 0.63 rating for a special Friday episode of the show.

As compared to this same week in 2020, SmackDown was up five percent in total viewers and up 16 percent in the 18-49 demo. It's the third straight week the show has had year-over-year increases in both categories.

Listed below are the last 11 weeks of overall viewership and 18-49 demo numbers for SmackDown, along with the 10-week averages for comparison purposes. This week's episode was up 3.5 percent from the recent average in overall viewers but down 1.7 percent in 18-49.

 

[Deezy]

Other TV wrestling shows depend on minute demos, WWE has guaranteed revenue and don't need to rely on commercial time so using the demos for WWE programming is just people trying to pretend some things are equal.

It's the overall viewership that FOX cares about.

 

[Kim Jong Umb]