WWE Smackdown Rating Hits Eleven-Month High With Daniel Bryan

– Correlation is not causation, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that Daniel Bryan’s big announcement led to an eleven-month high in Smackdown’s ratings. Tuesday night’s episode had a 0.99 rating in the 18 – 49 demographic and 2.888 million viewers. Those numbers were up 9% and 4% respectively from last week’s 0.91 demo rating and 2.771 million viewers. The numbers were the best since the April 11th, 2017 Smackdown, which had a 1.05 demo rating and an audience of 3.105 million.

With the boost in numbers, Smackdown easily won the night among cable originals per Showbuzz Daily. It beat out H&G’s Fixer Uppers (0.72 demo rating, 3.447 million viewers) and the NBA game on TNT (0.71/1.604 million) for the top spot.