WWE Smackdown Viewers Crash To Record Low

WWE's television troubles continue.

By Grahame Herbert /

WWE Smackdown this week drew its lowest non-holiday audience since moving to Syfy Network in 2010. The show took in an average of 1.981 million viewers, down 10% from last week's 2.195 million average. Smackdown has only previously dipped below two million viewers on one occasion, and that was last year on the July 4th broadcast. That was explained by the holiday, but this latest dip could be a sign of a more worrying decline in interest. There was college football up against the broadcast, but it also people just losing interest in WWE. Especially Smackdown, which is a show that is booked to not matter. The company only put effort into Raw, and even those ratings have been shockingly bad in 2015. With television troubles now consistent through this year, WWE must seriously think about why fans aren't tuning in. There's almost an arrogance in the way Raw and Smackdown are presented sometimes, as if WWE just expect viewers to show up. There's some hope that Smackdown could be pushed as a bigger brand next year, but it isn't something to hold your breath on. Even if all shows were booked strongly, there's still the issue of too much wrestling on television in one week. With Raw, NXT and Smackdown, viewers have to give up six hours. That's too much, and it also ties in with why the WWE Network could be suffering. Few people can find time to watch on-demand classic content, when the week is already full up with television wrestling.