WWE Smackdown Rating: New Year’s Day edition rebounds from Christmas, but almost knocked out of top ten by college football

By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor


SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...

The Jan. 1 episode of WWE Smackdown (Not) Live on USA Network drew a 1.44 rating and a viewership of 2.091 million viewers. That is down from the Jan. 2 year-ago rating of 1.80 and 2.720 million viewers. That’s 629,000 fewer viewers, although it’s not a fair comparison because this week’s episode fell on New Year’s Day with a number of major college football Bowl Games as competition. This week’s rating is above last week’s record low Christmas night rating of 1.24.

The rolling ten week average rating headed into this week was 1.49.

Smackdown was almost knocked out of the Top Ten Rankings this week on cable in the key demographic of 18-49 year olds, coming in at no. 10. Eight of the top ten shows were college football games or studio shows discussing those games. History Channel’s “Curse of Oak Island: Rock Solid 68” tied with Smackdown with a 0.7 rating in that 18-49 demo, but had nearly 50 percent more viewers overall (thus a lot more viewers 50 and over).

RELATED: Raw Ratings Report 2018: New Year’s Eve key metrics along with perspective on 2018 vs. 2017 and sharp decline last four months of year

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