Post Superstar Shake-up edition of Smackdown ratings sink, key metrics to put drop-off in perspective

Last night’s episode of Smackdown (4/24) drew a 1.78 rating, down from the 1.99 and 2.10 the last two weeks for the Superstar Shake-up and post-WrestleMania editions. It matches what the ten week rolling average was for the ten weeks before WrestleMania. The current ten-week rolling average is 1.83.

Viewership was 2.549 million. The headline match was A.J. Styles & Karl Anderson & Luke Gallows vs. Shinsuke Nakamura & Rusev & Aiden English.

Smackdown drew a 1.71 rating one year ago, and a 1.71 two years ago, this week.

The 2018 average so far is 1.81, down slightly from the 1.83 average of 2017 through this many weeks.

All in all, this is about what WWE would have expected coming out of the newsworthy prior two weeks. The goal is going to be that viewership will increase over levels of the last two years once the new talent gets traction and new feuds engage audiences more than what Smackdown has presented for the last year, which has largely been panned as a step back for the Tuesday show in terms of which wrestlers were featured and how they were booked.

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