The overnight numbers are in for Friday Night SmackDown and the third episode on Fox saw another drop in the show’s audience.
Based on the overnights, SmackDown averaged 2,441,500 viewers, which is down 15% from last week’s draft special and down 37% from the premiere two weeks ago. The audience grew from 2,390,000 viewers in the first hour to 2,493,000 in the second hour as the program went against the ALCS game between the New York Yankees and Houston Astros.
SmackDown’s biggest strength has been its hold of adults 18-34 and 18-49, where they were the top program among those demographics for the night on network programming. Among adults 18-34 they did a 0.5 in hour one and a 0.6 in hour two. In the adult 18-49 demo, they did a 0.7 and 0.8 respectively compared to a 1.4 in week one and a 1.0 in week two.
It’s worth adding, that based on the reporting of Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the audience for the premiere of SmackDown on Fox grew 13.5% with DVR+7 viewing. The first week saw an average of 3,888,000 for the live episode and 4,409,000 including DVR viewership over the next week. The DVR viewership also increased the adult 18-49 demo from a 1.4 to a 1.6 in week one.
The overnight number is based on the top metered markets with the final number that represents the entire country expected to be released on Tuesday.
Next week’s episode of SmackDown is being moved to FS 1 due to Fox’s commitments to the World Series. WWE has announced Brock Lesnar and Cain Velasquez in a face-to-face segment for the episode along with appearances by Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair to promote Crown Jewel.
