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Viewers were down a smidgen from the week prior for WWE’s SmackDown LIVE on Tues., Aug 20. But they’re probably not sweating the 22K people they lost while attracting an audience of 2,142,000.
And not just because that was good enough to make SmackDown the fifth most watched cable original, behind Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and Fox News’ primetime block. WWE’s audience was also significantly larger than what their soon-to-be home Fox was airing on its broadcast channel, too (a repeat of The Resident and First Responders Live both had less than 1.5 million viewers).
Mostly, it would be because the show’s rating was up from the week prior. The .68 share of the overall 18-49 year old demographic won the night on cable, and handily beat everything on the big four networks except ABC’s Bachelor in Paradise and NBC’s America’s Got Talent.
Sure, it’s the rerun-filled days of summer, but WWE and USA will take it.
Here’s a list of SmackDown’s numbers from the past six months to mull over while you’re wondering how this show will do next week, and how NXT will do on Oct. 18:
Aug. 13 - 2.16 million / .67
Aug. 6 - 2.09 / .63
July 30 - 1.91 / .57
July 23 - 2.16 / .65
July 16 - 2.12 / .65
July 9 - 1.85 million / .53
July 2 - 1.89 / .56
June 25 - 1.92 / .62
June 18 - 1.86 / .56
June 11 - 1.93 million / .60
June 4 - 2.02 / .60
May 28 - 2.07 / .69
May 21 - 1.98 / .61
May 14 - 1.83 / .56
May 7 - 1.93 / .58
April 30 - 1.83 / .54
April 23 - 2.07 / .71
April 16 - 2.22 / .74
April 9 - 2.2 / .78
April 2 - 2.14 / .71
Mar. 26 - 2.39 / .79
Mar. 19 - 2.21 / .74
Mar. 12 - 2.2 / .71
Mar. 5 - 2.16 / .7
Feb. 26 - 2.15 / .76
Feb. 19 - 2.27 / .75
Feb. 12 - 2.03 / .66
Feb. 5 - 1.84 / .64
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