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After last Tuesday’s record low numbers, we pretty much figured SmackDown had nowhere to go but up on Feb. 12. You never know these days, but without major competition from sports or politics, another valley would have been shocking, and disastrous.
Fortunately the expected bounce back occurred, and viewership rose by almost 200K this week to give the blue brand an audience of 2,034,000. That’s still not great, and the smallest audience the show’s had in 2019 when not going up against a speech by President Trump. But let’s call it a win. They did beat a big NBA game between Boston & Philadelphia en route to being the eighth most watched show among cable originals on the night.
Demographic share among 18 - 49 year olds also came back - a little, but not a lot - to a .66. They didn’t beat Sixers/Celtics in this metric, and came in third best on cable, behind the NBA and History’s Curse of Oak Island.
An optimistic read might be that the hot ending of Raw and the promise of a gauntlet match brought people back. A realistic one is that this is probably where numbers would have been last week if SmackDown wasn’t up against the State of the Union, and they’re still down from what it was drawing around Royal Rumble. A pessimistic take is that these are really bad numbers for the Road to WrestleMania.
While you decide how full your glass is, here’s a list of WWE’s Tuesday numbers from the past six months:
Feb. 5 - 1.84 / .64
Jan. 29 - 2.14 / .7
Jan. 22 - 2.14 / .69
Jan. 15 - 2.14 / .7
Jan. 8 - 2.03 million / .72
Jan. 1 - 2.09 million / .68
Dec. 25 - 1.9 million / .61
Dec. 18 - 2.21 million / .74
Dec. 11 - 1.98 million / .68
Dec. 4 - 1.95 million / .66
Nov. 27 - 2.26 million / .81
Nov. 20 - 2.15 million / .69
Nov. 13 - 2.31 million / .90
Nov. 6 - 2.1 million / .68
Oct. 30 - 2.11 million / .73
Oct. 23 - 2.09 million / .69
Oct. 16 - 2.55 million / .92
Oct. 9 - 2.1 million / .67
Oct. 2 - 2.1 million / .68
Sept. 25 - 2.19 million / .72
Sept. 18 - 2.28 million / .78
Sept. 11 - 2.23 million / .72
Sept. 4 - 2.32 million / .77
Aug. 28 - 2.35 million / .75
Aug. 21 - 2.44 million / .77
Aug. 14 - 2.19 million / .7
Aug. 7 - 2.2 million / .73
For complete results and the live blog for SmackDown this week click here. To read a complete recap & review of all the night’s events click here. For a full playlist of the show click here.
Source: Showbuzz Daily