The Christmas Eve edition of Friday Night SmackDown did drop in viewership but did manage to finish second among network programming.
The December 24th program on Fox averaged 1,972,000 viewers with 0.48 in the 18-49 demographic, according to Showbuzz Daily.
It was down 14 percent in viewership from the week prior and down 8 percent in the key demo. It was hardly the least-watched SmackDown of the year on Fox with seven other episodes having lower viewership, but all those episodes were from the ThunderDome era.
The competition for the evening centered around holiday programming. The only network program to top SmackDown was “It’s a Wonderful Life” on NBC that did 0.61 in 18-49 with 3,400,000 viewers.
Cable was dominated by marathons of “A Christmas Story” on TBS and “Friends” on TBS with airings of “Rudolph the Red Nose Deer” and “Frosty the Snowman” on Freeform. The 8-10 p.m. ET airing on TBS topped cable with 0.60 in 18-49 and 2,089,000 viewers followed by Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman.
Last year, SmackDown aired on Christmas Day and had a giant football lead-in that led to SmackDown averaging 3,303,000 viewers and 0.96 in 18-49.
This Friday, it’s a ‘Best of 2021’ edition of SmackDown that is scheduled to air on FS1.
Originally, Fox was airing a ‘New Year’s Eve Toast & Roast’ from Times Square but canceled the live special due to the spread of COVID-19.
