WWE’s plan to give SmackDown its biggest audience yet paid off, at least in its debut. Last night’s WWE Draft episode of Smackdown, the show’s debut in its new live Tuesday timeslot, managed to beat this week’s RAW in both ratings metrics. The show brought in a 1.18 rating and 3.17 million viewers, up a massive 111% and 53% from last week’s final Thursday episode (0.56 demo rating, 2.068 million viewers). More notably, it was up 4% and 1% from Monday’s RAW numbers (1.13, 3.133 million).
Of course, the attraction of the heavily-promoted Draft, the new timeslot and the live format all factored heavily into the ratings jump, and the more important question will be to see how the show holds up in following weeks. A drop is very likely, as is the typical case for shows following a much hyped debut/timeslot move.
SmackDown ranked #1 among cable originals for the night, topping The Haves & Have Nots on OWN.
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