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WWE has to be happy with their television numbers this week. Overall, they’re still way down from even a year ago, but hitting a couple highs after being in the doldrums all year has to feel nice.
Following up a nice overall rebound for Raw (even if the drops were historically bad), SmackDown was up more than 200K for the second straight week on Tues., Feb. 19. What’s more, reaching an audience of 2,269,000 was the blue brand’s best viewership number since last November. That made it the ninth most watched cable original on the night, behind History’s Curse of Oak Island and Fox News & MSNBC’s political talk. WWE also won the night among 18 - 49 year olds, beating even History’s treasure hunters with a .75.
With the actual numbers out of the way, the discussion of course turns to WHY?!?!
Both Raw and SmackDown had a strong lead-in thanks to a well received Elimination Chamber pay-per-view (PPV). The Tuesday night show in particular featured the star of Sunday night’s main event, Kofi Kingston. The NXT call-ups could be a factor, but while Aleister Black, Tommaso Ciampa, Johnny Gargano & Ricochet wrestled on both shows, they were only teased for SmackDown and not promised to appear.
Then there’s the Becky Lynch/Raw Women’s title picture to consider. This was the first week in a long time it wasn’t the main story on either show. Ronda Rousey wrestled on Monday and Charlotte Flair was promoted as responding to Lynch’s PPV attack on Tuesday, but that was it. While you wonder if there’s fan fatigue with that story, we’ll remind you that SmackDown’s November high was for the episode where Becky picked Charlotte as her replacement to face Rousey at Survivor Series.
Yeah, we don’t know what it all means either.
As you formulate your hypotheses, here’s a list of WWE’s Tuesday numbers from the past six months:
Feb. 12 - 2.03 / .66
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