WWE News: SmackDown Rating Sees Big Increase, Drops To Fifth In Rankings (10/16/18)

Last week’s episode of SmackDown Live put a stop to a rough streak in the ratings, as each brand has continually lost viewers each week since the post-SummerSlam episodes.

This week, WWE loaded up to celebrate the 1000th episode of SmackDown and with so many big names, returns and surprises, there’s no way that the blue brand could drop in ratings this week…right?

“Right” is the correct answer as the numbers for last night’s SmackDown 1000 are in and there’s a massive increase of 19.2% from last week, scoring a rating of 2.545, the show’s best rating in months. Here’s a look at the last four week of ratings for the blue brand:

• September 25th: 2.193
• October 2nd: 2.095
• October 9th: 2.135
• October 16th: 2.545

Oddly enough, the huge jump in ratings didn’t translate with the Cable Top 150 Rankings for the 18-49 demographic as SmackDown actually fell from 2nd to 5th. Here was last night’s top five:

1. NBA Basketball/76ers at Celtics – TNT – 1.41
2. NBA Basketball/Thunder at Warriors – TNT – 1.24
3. MLB ALCS – TBS – 1.15
4. MLB NLCS – FS1 – 1.14
5. SmackDown 1000 – USA Network – 0.92

EA’s Take: There was never a doubt in my mind about SmackDown’s rating in my mind this week. It was a foregone conclusion that it would go up again, it was just a matter of how much it would go up. SmackDown has had the luxury of not facing the NFL like RAW does on Mondays, so this is about as tough of competition as they’ll ever get with the MLB Playoffs and start of the NBA season on the same night. Dropping in the top five can seem discouraging, but their demographic share also jumped up from a 0.67 to a 0.92. Certainly, this won’t continue because this was a special episode, but that amount of Tuesday night competition won’t either.

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