SmackDown did much better on FS1 than it has in the past

SmackDown was bumped from its usual broadcast home on FOX to FS1 last Fri., Dec. 18. A drop in viewership and ratings was expected – and it happened. But it wasn’t as steep a drop as the other two times the blue brand’s been bumped to cable since moving to Fridays more than a year ago.

The TLC go home show drew over a million viewers. It’s .3 rating among 18 – 49 year olds was the fifth best among cable originals. When SmackDown’s been on FS1 in the past, its averaged an audience of 885K, and a .26 with the under 50 crowd.

Was it the PPV push? The Dwayne Johnson bait and switch on an otherwise very good post-show (Talking Smack had 343K viewers and .1 demo rating at 10 p.m.)? Either way, WWE is probably quite pleased with these numbers.

See where they stacks up with previous Fridays in our running tracker of overnight numbers for the new season. You can also access the tab of year one numbers here (all data still via Showbuzz Daily).

WWE’s pre-taping their Christmas night show tomorrow, but they’re loading it up with big championship matches to compensate. We’ll see how that works our for them when the holiday numbers come out next week.

For complete results and the live blog for SmackDown this week click here. To read a review of the night’s events click here. For a full playlist of the show click here.

---

**For Original Source – Click Here**