Friday night wrestling ratings fail to excite

The ratings are in for Mar. 11, and aside from some minor fluctuations, there’s not a whole lot to see here.

SmackDown saw both the main metrics fall for a Roman Reigns-free episode. The total audience dipped 1.5% from the week before, to 2.226 million. The rating among 18-49 year olds was down slightly more. This week’s .57 was a little more than 3% worse than Mar. 4 — but it was still the highest on all of television. The blue brand gave FOX the win over two shows that drew .55’s with the demo: ABC’s Shark Tank and Duke’s win over Miami in the ACC Basketball Tournament on ESPN.

College hoops and news helped push Rampage to a 23rd place finish among cable originals. That was despite the show’s .22 rating in the demo being identical to last Friday’s. Overall viewers were down roughly 3.5%, to 526K.

Both shows will be dealing with the NCAA Tournament next week, but WWE figures to fare better in its usual time slot and a promised “collision” between Reigns & Brock Lesnar. AEW will be bumped to late night by TNT’s March Madness coverage.