Smackdown Rating: Ratings surge post-Fastlane, complete perspective on Smackdown as the no. 1 cable show on Tuesday night, key metrics

This Tuesday’s March 13 episode of WWE Smackdown Live on USA Network drew a 1.90 rating, a genuine surge by today’s standards, and the highest rating of 2018 so far and the highest rating since Sept. 12 last year. Viewership was 2.771 million.

Smackdown as the no. 4 most watched show on cable TV on Tuesday night, behind The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC (3.413 million viewers), The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC (2.962 million viewers), and Fixer Upper on HOME (2.822 million viewers).  Among the key ratings demographic of 18-49 year olds, as cited by Zap2It.com, Smackdown was far and away the most highly rated cable show on Tuesday night with a 0.9 rating compared to a 0.6 rating for the no. 2 ranked show, NCAA Basketball on True TV. Smackdown had over 1 million more viewers than NCAA basketball when counting all viewers.

The ten-week average headed into this week was 1.75, which is also the 2018 average. The 2017 average through this week was 1.80. Two years ago Smackdown drew a 1.71 rating this week.

Smackdown this week followed WWE’s Fastlane PPV event two days earlier. The show was built around the first-ever live appearance of Asuka to confront her WrestleMania opponent Charlotte and a big announcement by Shane McMahon stemming from his involvement in the main event at Fastlane and his interference against Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens. The show opened strong with a lengthy A.J. Styles vs. Rusev match.