The debut of Friday Night SmackDown on Fox drew 3.87 million viewers according to Nielsen via ShowBuzz Daily. It also drew a 1.4 rating and an 8 share in the A18-49 demo.
Although the threshold for the debut may have been 4.5 million viewers (see below), the telecast was the highest rated in the A18-49 demo for the night on the networks. It was third in total viewers in the 8-9pm time slot to Hawaii Five-O (6.93M) and The Blacklist (3.97M) (via Television By Numbers). Yet, an 8 share was double of any other network show in either the 8-9 or 9-10 time slot.
Top line number needs to be at or above the 4.5M WWE drew for 25th anniversary of Raw in January 2018 to offer evidence in support of broadcast reach expanding WWE audience. https://t.co/egNfESR8b4
— Adam Swift (@AdamMSwift) October 4, 2019
Fox went big for the debut of SmackDown with the appearances of The Rock, boxer Tyson Fury and the surprise debut of Cain Velasquez. Certainly, the ratings have to be pleasing for Fox which promoted it throughout all of its media and the WWE which likely proved its worth to the network on Friday night. The question will be whether SmackDown can sustain this rating and surpass it to show an attractive expanse for the viewers. If you are to look at interest based on twitter, there were a certain amount of people that had not watched wrestling in a while that found SmackDown. Whether those viewers convert to regulars will be an interesting case study on how this goes for the television deal.
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