WWE SmackDown draws best ratings in a month

Final numbers are in for Friday night’s edition of SmackDown on Fox. The show averaged 2.252 million viewers, up five percent from last week.

This was the highest viewership number for SmackDown since the February 5 episode of the show.

Friday’s SmackDown drew a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demo, up 11.1 percent from the previous week. That’s also the best number SmackDown has done since February 5.

SmackDown was the second-highest rated show on television on the night in 18-49, trailing only ABC’s Shark Tank.

SmackDown finished first on TV in the 18-34 demo with a 0.37 rating, up 27.6 percent from the previous week, so the SmackDown audience was skewing much younger for this episode.

Fox still finished last among the major networks in total viewership with no other channel averaging below three million viewers.

Year-over-year, SmackDown held up fairly well as compared to recent weeks. The show was down 8.3 percent in overall viewership as compared to last year. It was down 14.3 percent in the 18-49 demo year-over-year and down 7.5 percent in 18-34.

The year-over-year comparisons will be a little more fair starting next week as we are reaching one year since the era of closed set wrestling shows began.