SmackDown one-week move to FS1 leads to a drastic drop in viewership
Friday Night SmackDown lost nearly two million viewers in one week, as it moved from FOX to FS1 for one week only.
The show fell to 888,000 viewers, down from 2.4 million on the SmackDown previous. It has also fallen drastically from the 3.9 million on its season premiere.
The move was due to them being pre-empted for the MLB World Series, so many expected a drop in viewership. However, no one expected a huge 63% drop in viewership from Fox the week prior.
This SmackDown advertised Brock Lesnar, Cain Velasquez, Hulk Hogan, and Ric Flair.
AEW Dynamite drew more viewers on Wednesday Night than SmackDown, raking in 963,000 viewers. AEW topped SmackDown in every category except 50+ viewership.
SmackDown did a 0.27 among people 18-49 with the best performance among their key demos shown in males 18-49 where they did a 0.41 followed by a 0.39 for 50+ viewers. Comparing to NXT, they beat SmackDown among females 18-49 (0.19 to 0.14), and females 12-34 (0.12 to 0.09).
Friday’s show went against the World Series with Game 4 between the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals averaging 12,220,000 viewers on Fox.