Image: WWE
Friday Night SmackDown, which made a one-week move to FS1 this past week, averaged 1.030 million viewers. The episode was SmackDown’s go-home show for TLC.
In the cable rankings, SmackDown finished fifth for the night in the 18-49 demo with a 0.30 rating.
The viewership number and demo rating is about half of what SmackDown had been doing on Fox, which is to be expected with far less homes having access to FS1. The one-week shift to FS1 was due to college football’s Pac-12 Championship Game being on Fox.
SmackDown’s audience was up from the 881,000 viewers the show averaged the last time it was moved to FS1. That episode took place on October 23 of this year and went up against a World Series game on Fox as well as the normal slate of network programming.
CBS averaged over five million viewers for its two hours against SmackDown this past Friday. The Pac-12 Championship game drew 3.8 million viewers on Fox.
In the 18-49 demo, this past Friday’s SmackDown was up from the 0.25 rating it averaged on FS1 this October.
SmackDown’s rating in the 18-49 demo was slightly lower than AEW Dynamite’s number in the same category last week as that show drew a 0.32 rating on Wednesday. Last Wednesday’s Dynamite averaged 806,000 viewers.
Friday’s special one-hour edition of Talking Smack, which aired directly after SmackDown on FS1, averaged 414,000 viewers and finished 66th on cable in the 18-49 demo with a 0.11 rating.
This was the third time that SmackDown has moved to FS1 due to a scheduling conflict. In 2019, an episode of SmackDown aired on FS1 due to a World Series game being on Fox. That SmackDown episode averaged 888,000 viewers and drew a 0.27 rating in the 18-49 demo.