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More good, albeit unsurprising, news for WWE.
As part of its so-called "WWE Week," USA broadcasted a special two-hour live commercial free episode of SmackDown last night (Tues., Dec. 18, 2012) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The show featured all the fallout from both the TLC pay-per-view (PPV) on Sunday night and Monday Night Raw the evening after.
Despite all that content, six hours worth before Tuesday night, SmackDown managed to pull a 2.3 rating for an average of 3.33 million viewers of the full two hours.
That's good for the best rating of the year for the show that usually airs on Friday nights on SyFy. It blew away the previous live special back on Nov. 6, which did just 2.2 million viewers on Election Night 2012.
These numbers were largely expected, and artificially inflated due to the lack of commercials, but WWE appears to be turning the corner just as we head for the "Road to WrestleMania."
Good timing.
For complete results and reactions to SmackDown last night click here and here.