The New Year’s Eve viewership figures are in for a ‘Top 10 Moments’ edition of Friday Night SmackDown and a new episode of AEW Rampage.
SmackDown did not air a new episode, instead, running its ‘Top 10 Moments’ retrospective with the show shifted to FS 1 for the night. Initially, Fox was scheduled to air a live New Year’s Eve special that was canceled due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
The ‘Top 10 Moments’ special averaged 378,000 viewers and 0.09 rating in the 18-49 demographic on cable as it finished #58 among cable originals for the night, per Showbuzz Daily.
The show will return to Fox this Friday with a live episode from Uncasville, Connecticut featuring an appearance by new WWE champion Brock Lesnar.
The New Year’s Eve edition of Rampage averaged 453,000 viewers and 0.19 in the 18-49 demo, finishing #21 among cable originals.
The episode was taped two nights prior at Daily’s Place and was headlined by Cody Rhodes defending the TNT championship against Ethan Page and a bloody street fight with Tay Conti & Anna Jay defeating The Bunny & Penelope Ford.
While you shouldn’t put much focus onto either program’s performance given the circumstances, Rampage did perform better on Christmas night with 589,000 viewers and 0.26 in the 18-49 demo with Sammy Guevara vs. Cody Rhodes in the main event on a different night for the program.
New Year’s Eve was dominated by college football with both WWE and AEW going against the massive game between Georgia and Michigan that averaged 16,506,000 viewers and 4.55 in 18-49 on ESPN.
ABC’s New Year’s Eve special from 8-10 p.m. ET against SmackDown averaged 5,801,000 and 1.58 in 18-49 while the network increased to 8,784,000 and 2.62 in 18-49 at 10 p.m. against Rampage.
In Canadian viewership news, the December 29th episode of Dynamite from Daily’s Place averaged 96,900 viewers and 49,100 in the 25-54 demographic on TSN 2, which was way down from previous weeks and their lowest audience in Canada since November 10th.
The New Year’s Eve edition of SmackDown averaged 117,500 viewers and 43,800 in the 25-54 demographic on Sportsnet 360, which was down from 156,700 viewers on Christmas Eve the week prior.
