One week after the NFL Draft stalled off its post-WrestleMania momentum, SmackDown faced two high stakes playoff games from the NBA & NHL — and more football — on Fri., May 2.
Per Programming Insider, it took another chunk out of the audience. Last Friday’s SmackDown was watched by 1,406,000 and had a .37 rating with 18-49 year olds. That’s an almost 12% drop in the overall audience and a more than 27% decline in the demo number. It’s also the worst rating the show’s done since last December’s pre-taped Christmas show.
The basketball game that aired opposite SmackDown’s final two hours would seem to be the main culprit. Houston/Golden State on ESPN led all of television on May 2 with an audience of 4.6 million with a 1.40 rating in the demo. WWE finished third in the demo on cable behind that and its pre-show, but was first on broadcast.
Hockey was also likely a factor, with TNT’s coverage of Winnipeg/St. Louis finishing in the cable top ten after drawing 644K viewers and a .35 in the demo. And while it probably wasn’t much of a factor, it is co-owned by The Final Boss… the UFL had an audience of 572K and a .12 on SmackDown’s old home, FOX.
It’s a full slate this Friday, with two NBA and two NHL conference semi-final games on the docket. We’ll see if SmackDown can bounce back, then update our running tally of the past year’s worth of the show’s results:
* Moved from FOX to USA Network (broadcast to cable)
** Added a third hour
For complete results from the latest SmackDown, our live blog is here. To read a recap & review of the night’s events click here.