What’s the story?
Smackdown Live! may be putting on some fairly quality programming lately, but that quality hasn’t exactly translated to successful ratings. For the second week in a row, the Blue Brand lost viewers.
Previously...
Just three weeks ago, Smackdown Live! had seen its highest viewership of the year, drawing in over 3.1 million viewers on April 11th– even higher than the previous week’s post-WrestleMania edition of 2.9 million. The Superstar Shake-up certainly drove fan interest, as folks tuned in to see what new additions to the Smackdown roster would pop up. But, since then, it looks like the novelty has worn off a bit.
The heart of the story
The week after the Shake-up saw viewership dip significantly, going from the previously mentioned 3.1 million to 2.5 million. Fortunately, despite the fact that the ratings dropped again this week, it was nowhere near as significant amount, as it drew 2.4 million fans.
What’s next?
Smackdown’s next PPV, Backlash, is still almost a month away, meaning they need to ramp up the viewership if they’re going to keep generating interest for it. It’s possible that because there’s a Smackdown presence on Raw’s Packback PPV this Sunday (Randy Orton takes on Bray Wyatt and Kevin Owens takes on Chris Jericho), that there could be some flow over. Three or four weeks before a PPV is not the time you want to start haemorrhaging viewers.
Author’s take
All that being said, Smackdown has been taking some risks in an attempt to create some new stars. They’re giving Jinder Mahal the main event push he was rumoured to get back when he first joined the company. Baron Corbin is also being positioned as the brand’s major monster heel.
They’re also hyping up Shinsuke Nakamura big time, which is what they should be doing because that guy is money. I don’t know what kind of ratings they were expecting to get during the Superstar Shake-up episode, but they certainly couldn’t have been too surprised at the drop the following week.
I doubt anyone there is in Panic Mode, but hopefully, it means that they’re going to work hard to get those viewers back. A successful Smackdown means a more entertaining WWE.
