WWE News: SmackDown Live Rating Dips, Election Night Dominates Rankings (11/6/18)

While Monday Night RAW is coming off back-to-back weeks of dropped ratings, WWE’s SmackDown Live was able to increase its audience last week and also continue holding onto the top of the Cable Top 150 Rankings for the 18-49 demographic. However, there’s some much different competition this week.

The numbers for last night’s SmackDown Live are in and we’re heading back downward with a 2.088, a dip of 1.04% from last week. Here’s a look at the last four weeks of ratings for the blue brand:

• October 16th: 2.545
• October 23rd: 2.087
• October 30th: 2.110
• November 6th: 2.088

Now, generally when SmackDown Live’s ratings have not performed, they have still been able to take the number one spot in the Cable Top 150 Rankings in the 18-49 demographic. Unfortunately for the blue brand, last night was election night here in the United States and SmackDown Live was not only knocked out of the top five, but fell all the way to number 17 with a 0.68 share. Interestingly enough, the only programming not based around the election to jump ahead of SmackDown Live were the College Football Rankings show and two College Basketball Regular Season opening games. Here was the top five:

1. Election Night (9PM) – CNN – 1.96
2. Election Night (10PM) – CNN – 1.88
3. Election Night (8PM) – CNN – 1.58
4. *TIE* America’s Election HQ (9PM & 10PM) – FOX News – 1.39

EA’s Take: Well, I certainly didn’t see this coming. Scold me all you want, but I don’t get into politics in the least, so let’s not get into them here too much. I was not even remotely thinking about the elections when it came to something that could affect WWE in the ratings (I say ratings, but it mostly affected them in the Cable Top 150). If anything, I still attribute this week’s drops for RAW and SmackDown Live ratings to both episodes being pre-recorded. The numbers in the 18-49 dropped some, which I also would attribute to that as well because that number is virtually the same for WWE every week.

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