Final Smackdown Rating, Viewership Tick Upward From Overnight Numbers

The final numbers are in for last week’s Smackdown, which saw its rating and audience move up a bit. Friday’s show brought in a 0.6 in the 18 – 49 demographic and 2.155 million viewers, both up from the initial overnight estimate of a 0.55 demo rating and 2.043 mllion viewers. That made the show steady in its demo rating against the previous week and up 2% in viewers from 2.11 million.

It’s important to note that demo rating are broken down by the hour in overnights and by the full program length in the final numbers, with both rounded off to the single decimal point. That’s how a 0.55 was possible in the overnights (0.5 for first hour, 0.6 for the second hour). It could simply be that the 0.55 rounded up to a 0.6, or there could have been some fluctuation upward that brought it closer to an actual 0.6.

Smackdown came in at #2 among broadcast network originals for the first time in 13 weeks, losing to the NBA Finals on ABC (2.4 demo rating, 6.609 million viewers) per Showbuzz Daily. Smackdown was ahead of all cable shows for the night.