WWE SmackDown Rises in Ratings & Viewership for CM Punk Return

– Programming Insider has the preliminary overnight numbers for last night’s edition of WWE SmackDown on FOX. Last night’s show featured CM Punk appearing on SmackDown for the first time in nearly 10 years. Last night’s live broadcast also served as this year’s Tribute to the Troops special.

Unsurprisingly, the show saw a rise in its overnight numbers. Last night’s live FOX broadcast averaged 2.29 million viewers. The preliminary audience increased from last week’s show, which averaged 1.952 million viewers for the overnight number. For comparison, the final audience for last week’s show was 2.044 million viewers.

In the P18-49 key ratings demo, the show drew an average 0.57 rating for the preliminary overnight number. Last week’s overnight rating was 0.53. The final rating for last week was a 0.59.

WWE SmackDown topped the primetime key demo ratings for broadcast network programming.