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Last night's episode of SmackDown was an unusually newsworthy show that was heavily praised by our own Tonya Rodgers. It was promoted with a Miz TV segment featuring Lana and Dolph Ziggler and was headlined by a tag team match pitting Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose against the division champions, The New Day.
As the Observer has noted, it set a record for the lowest viewership total for a non-replay, non-holiday show, pulling just 1.98 million viewers.
It should be noted that competition was strong from both the NFL preseason, in its final week, and the start of college football season with plenty of big games to go around. SmackDown has struggled mightily since the NFL came back around. Here are the viewers for the past month of shows:
Aug. 13: 2.08 million
Aug. 20: 2.43 million
Aug. 27: 2.19 million
Sept. 3: 1.98 million
SmackDown moved from Friday to Thursday earlier this year and saw a drop in viewers. The show will move from the SyFy network to USA next year but it looks like competition from the NFL will eat into its ratings throughout the winter.
For complete results and a full recap from the show click here and here.