SmackDown and Rampage start the new year with strong TV numbers

With Christmas and New Year’s Eve falling on Fridays, and WWE & FOX and AEW & TNT changing up their usual end of the week wrestling offerings as a result, the last two weeks have been rocky for SmackDown and Rampage.

Jan. 7 marked a return to normalcy, and brought strong numbers for both shows.

After a taped show on Dec. 24 and a clip show for FS1 the week after that, SmackDown was live again last Friday with a confrontation between World champs and a Tag title fight. 2.271 million people tuned in to watch. That 15% more than Christmas Eve on FOX, but not quite as good as the last live episode on WWE’s broadcast home (1% less than Dec. 17).

Ratings were up considerably over both those episodes, however. Jan. 7’s .58 among 18-49 year olds was 21% better than Dec. 24 and 11.5% above the week before that. It didn’t win the night for FOX, though. Top marks went to ABC’s Shark Tank and 20/20, with SmackDown third.

Over on cable, Rampage had an audience of 588K and a .24 in the 18-49 demo. Those numbers are way above Dec. 31 (30% and 26%, respectively). They were also only slightly below the best-since-”Grand Slam” figures the show pulled Christmas night at 9pm ET (a negligible .17% audience drop, and a little more than 7.5% off in the rating). It was the seventh highest rated cable original on the night.

Can they keep the momentum going in the second week of 2022? We shall see.