FOX airing SmackDown for the first time on October 4th was the grandest weekly episode in the entire year of 2019. It was about to begin a new era in the programming that would resemble the mainstream sports world.
Automatically, the network thought that the viewership will be going up for the WWE contents as they will be launching more of them in due course. But the ‘honeymoon’ period is said to be over within just a few weeks. Results from last week’s SmackDown with videos
For the third week in a row, SmackDown has dropped in ratings. It has drawn lower viewership than the previous week which has bad indications. Losing viewers within just two weeks is not a good sign for a show launched in a much bigger network.
Major segments are official for this week’s SmackDown
FOX targeted to draw three million viewers, per week, on average. WWE was successful in the first week by big margin but could not retain it in the next two weeks.
The grand premiere episode had 3.888 million viewers whereas the second and third episodes had 2.887 and 2.442 million viewers, consecutively.
The primary reason behind scoring such a huge number in the opening week was the presence of The Rock who returned after more than three years on a WWE TV show. Following that, the Draft and fresh matchups failed to keep the viewership above 3 million.
As a result of the same, WWE has already fired the former SmackDown Executive Director Eric Bischoff and gave duties to another veteran name, Bruce Prichard.
But the problem is not going to solve anytime soon unless and until the creative team focusses on building new stars and connecting with the fans. It’s the fan reactions they just can’t afford to ignore at this point.
This is the reason why Firefly Funhouse segment is coming back on SmackDown despite Seth Rollins burning it down,
“FOX originally told WWE to “scrap” the fan-favorite “FireFly FunHouse” segments due to it not fitting into FOX’s plan to present SmackDown as a real-sports show. When Seth Rollins burned down the FunHouse that was supposed to be it. Fans were not happy and the power of social media struck again.
FOX was hit by upset request by fans to not take away one of their favorite parts of WWE and with many viewers tuning out of WWE these days the FunHouse was one of the few bright shining spots fans had to be excited for every week.”
Hopefully, WWE will be able to pull up SmackDown viewership to a significant extent in the upcoming weeks. Or else, FOX will move the show to FS1, permanently. They will not tolerate the decline in ratings after investing one billion, per year.
