SmackDown‘s run of first place finishes in the Friday night ratings has been snapped, and just like the last time WWE didn’t win the night for USA, it was a live sporting event that beat it. Perhaps with an assist from a certain romantic holiday…
According to Programming Insider, the Feb. 14 SmackDown drew an average hourly audience of 1,384,000 viewers and a .42 rating among 18-49 year olds. The Valentine’s Day edition was down 8% from the previous week in overall viewers, and 12.5% in the demo. Both are lows for the year-to-date, and represent SmackDown’s worst performance since the pre-taped, pre-Christmas episode.
The last SmackDown finished second in the demo on a Friday night, college football beat it out. This time, it was ESPN’s coverage of the NBA Celebrity All-Star Game (featuring Bayley… scoring no points in 11 minutes for the losing team) that finished first among all broadcast and cable originals. It barely won the night with a .43 in the demo, but a win’s a win. CBS’s NCIS: Sydney finished first in total viewers with 4.14 million.
No data on how many people who usually watch television on Friday nights were out to dinner with their sweethearts.
WWE should be able to retake first place this week. We’ll know soon enough. Until then, here’s our running tally of the past year’s worth of SmackDown’s numbers:
* Moved from FOX to USA Network (broadcast to cable)
** Added a third hour
For complete results and this week’s SmackDown live blog click here, and to read a recap & review of the night’s events click here.
