7/14 WWE Smackdown TV rating sinks for final Thursday airing, but huge DVR bump

The final Thursday night Smackdown airing drew a poor TV audience to finish the era. However, DVR viewing uncharacteristically skyrocketed for Smackdown.

WWE Smackdown TV Ratings Tracking

July 14: WWE Smackdown scored a 1.56 TV rating, down from a 1.62 rating last week.

The live viewing audience was 2.068 million viewers, down 7.7 percent from last week.

It was the second-fewest live viewers of the year, ending the Thursday night run with a whimper.

– Demographically, there was a huge drop of 26 percent in males 18-49 viewers to the lowest m18-49 rating of the year.

Elsewhere, adults 18-49 fell 18 percent and males 18-34 fell 19 percent.

– Then, there was a sudden, unexplained huge surge in DVR viewing. Most of this can be attributed to a 22 percent addition in the m18-49 demo after falling off the table Thursday night.

Overall, Smackdown added 345,000 delayed viewers, nearly doubling last week’s DVR audience of 177,000 viewers.

It was by far the most DVR viewers added this year, topping the previous high of 262,000 viewers back in March.

• Smackdown First-Run: 2.068 million viewers
• DVR added 345,000 viewers
• TOTAL AUDIENCE: 2.413 million viewers

The huge surge in DVR viewing was nearly enough to match last week’s total audience.

The result was a total audience of 2.413 million viewers, just slightly down from 2.418 million total viewers for the July 7 episode with Brock Lesnar’s Summerslam announcement.

WWE Smackdown Q3 2016 Total Viewers