WWE Draft SmackDown beats Monday’s Raw in viewership

The SmackDown draft show, the first of the now-weekly Tuesday live shows, did 3.17 million viewers, which would be the best SmackDown rating since it moved to the USA Network.

The rating was up from the 2.0 to 2.3 million that the show was doing on Thursdays, but that was expected. The number was very slightly ahead of the 3.13 million viewers Raw did the night prior, but it figured to be since the show had been hyped for weeks and was considered the most important television show in months.

The show placed sixth for the night on cable, trailing only news shows on Fox News and beat repeat programming on ABC, as well as FOX and CW head-to-head, as well as CNN. More eyes were on USA for SmackDown during the two hours than any stations other than CBS, NBC and Fox News.

In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown was the top rated show on cable and delivered far more male viewers in particular than the show had been doing on Thursdays when SmackDown of late had the highest concentration of female viewers of any WWE wrestling-based television show.

The number wasn’t unexpectedly high, but the question is how well it maintains and what the regular number for a non-special show turns out to be.

Bryan Alvarez and Mike Sempervive broke down the Draft with tons of news on today’s Wrestling Observer Live, and Bryan and Dave Meltzer will return with more on Wrestling Observer Radio tonight.