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What's the story?
Wrestling News World reported that the latest WWE Smackdown Live tapings recorded a new low in viewership, drawing only 2,320,000 viewers. It is an all-time low since June and continued an alarming downward trend in the viewership pattern for WWE.
In case you didn't know....
Yesterdays, SmackDown Live show was pretty good and featured the main event of Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn taking on Randy Orton and Shinsuke Nakamura in a tag-team match.
It also had the WWE Champion, Jinder Mahal, issue a challenge to 'The Beast' Brock Lesnar for a Champion vs Champion match at Survivor Series. Dolph Ziggler and Bobby Roode also faced each other in a rematch of their encounter at Hell in a Cell, with Dolph Ziggler coming off as the victor, while Sin Cara managed a huge upset victory over the new United States Champion Baron Corbin.
The heart of the matter
SmackDown Live took a huge hit as it ran against two MLB playoff games this week as well as the start of the NBA Season, and ranked 9th on cable for Tuesday night. In a category where they usually do really well, SmackDown Live finished 9th in the category of 18-49-year-olds as well.
The previous year the third Smackdown Live of October had 2,405,000 viewers. A look at just the previous episode shows that Smackdown Live took a hit of 6%, where they had drawn 2,467,000 viewers.
What's next?
The next episode of SmackDown Live has AJ Styles and Sunil Singh advertised for a match. Shane McMahon is also supposed to make his return on the show and it will be his first appearance since his loss to Kevin Owens after his huge dive off the top of the Cell at Hell in a Cell.
Author's take
SmackDown Live and WWE shows, in general, have shown a worrying downward trend in viewership over the past few months. With Survivor Series only a month away, WWE will want to up their game.
