Smackdown Rating: Last night’s rating, viewership, comparison to ten-week average (w/Keller’s Analysis)

Last night’s WWE Smackdown Live episode drew a 1.79 rating, tied with last week’s number. Viewership was up a small tick, from 2.628 million to 2.247 million, well within the margin of Nielson Ratings sampling error. This week’s show didn’t have any big matches advertised ahead of time, but did build around the follow-up to last week’s show-closing angle with A.J. Styles and Shane McMahon.

Keller’s Analysis: The rolling ten week average coming into this week was 1.85. The 2017 average is 1.84. Coming two weeks before WrestleMania, ideally WWE would like to see an indication of a peak of interest in the product as top storylines come to a crescendo, although this year the biggest WrestleMania storylines are more concentrated on the Raw brand. Compared to last year, though, this is pretty typical. Last year’s rating this week was 1.75. The 2016 average through this date was 1.78. So a year ago, the rating was also slightly below the average to that point in the year.