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OCTOBER 2019 WRESTLING CHAT.


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Last night's SmackDown averaged 2.898 million viewers in the overnight ratings, down 25 percent from last Friday's FOX premiere. 

The episode was night one of this year's WWE Draft.

In the key 18-49 demo, SmackDown averaged a 0.95 rating, down from 1.35 last week. 

The only demo where SmackDown didn't fall was in persons 50+. The show averaged a 3 rating in that demo both weeks. 

In comparison to the other networks, FOX trailed both CBS and NBC but beat ABC in terms of total viewers. SmackDown did finish first in the 18-34 and 18-49 demos. 

The first hour of SmackDown averaged 2.925 million viewers, with hour two doing 2.872 million viewers. The drop from the first to second hour was only two percent, a much better audience retention than Raw usually has over the course of its show.

Last week's SmackDown dropped three percent from in the second hour, but with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson appearing in the opening segment, it would've been expected to drop more. 

Final numbers will not be available until Tuesday afternoon but should end up relatively close to this. Last week, the final viewership was up 14,000 from the overnights, a change of just 0.3 percent.

https://www.f4wonline.com/wwe-news/wwe-smackdown-ratings-down-25-percent-fox-premiere-294706

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kudos to the person who posted "Perhaps the network which has received the most attention and has become the most well known for the "Friday Night Death Slot" has been Fox" on the 'Friday Night Death Slot' Wikipedia entry.

I'd be curious to see what the numbers look like in November when some more people are kept at home due to weather instead of being able to go out and do anything else on Friday nights. Although I do suspect that part of the ratings expectations are unrealistic because of the demo they're aiming for and the nature of ratings in 2019.

That being said, nothing about Eric Bischoff's post-1998 track record makes me think that he'll stick around for long if they need somebody to blame for ratings. No matter how little he actually has to do with things.

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I wonder if that's the settling in number or if the draft garnered more interest and itll be like 2.4 million next week. I mean just because it's FOX doesn't mean the number is going to be that much better than RAW.. we are down to the diehards here. There's like 2.5 million diehards maybe and that's it.

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If Bischoff's adding value in his main role of placating TV execs he may well be fairly safe as there's noone obvious who can replicate that TV experience. Vince has got XFL next year, and as much as he would hate to admit it, Bischoff is one of the few people who has experience of running a successful major wrestling organisation.

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1 hour ago, ComingToAmerica said:

If Bischoff's adding value in his main role of placating TV execs he may well be fairly safe as there's noone obvious who can replicate that TV experience. Vince has got XFL next year, and as much as he would hate to admit it, Bischoff is one of the few people who has experience of running a successful major wrestling organisation.

He can always go back to Jerry Jarrett. 

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5 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

I wonder if that's the settling in number or if the draft garnered more interest and itll be like 2.4 million next week. I mean just because it's FOX doesn't mean the number is going to be that much better than RAW.. we are down to the diehards here. There's like 2.5 million diehards maybe and that's it.

It'll be interesting on the settling in number, since there wasn't just the drop from last week for the draft, but also the fact that Fox and Dish/Sling came to an agreement, so Fox also got all the fans who had Dish Network and Sling back this week (which everyone said boded poorly for the premiere's ratings last week.) 

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The bad thing about Smackdown’s ratings is that if it continues to plummet it’ll make more TV executives gun shy about wrestling in the future. So the WWE needs to turn it around in the ratings, or it’ll drag down the business even further. 

It’s funny, because I personally predicted this. The original All In doing extremely well, along with all these indie promotions attracting hardcores to shows during Wrestlemania weekend, and creating these viral clips. I knew all this would help WWE make TV exces think that this business was about to make a huge turnaround, and them being the premier promotion would be the flag bearer for the new boom. It might still come. I don’t have my pulse on today’s youth(Although while watching Joker, I was surrounded by them. So I got a bit of an idea where things are headed with popular culture), so it could happen. But I don’t see it with the current incarnation of the WWE leading it. Especially if they keep gobbling up any spark of talent out there. They are only hurting themselves in the long run when they do that.

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Additional WWE Draft picks

Apollo Crews — SmackDown

Drew Gulak — SmackDown

EC3 — Raw

Eric Young — Raw

Heath Slater — SmackDown

Sin Cara — Raw

Tamina — SmackDown

The B-Team — SmackDown

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WWE has some cool people and cool characters that COULD capture today's youth but instead of capitalizing on what they do have they continue to trot out part timers and non-wrestling acts to garner "mainstream" coverage that they believe will bring in casual audiences and it just doesn't work like that.  Yes, The Rock can pull a rating for a week. Yes, Cain Velasquez will get some articles written on him. It doesn't stick. 

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30 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

WWE has some cool people and cool characters that COULD capture today's youth but instead of capitalizing on what they do have they continue to trot out part timers and non-wrestling acts to garner "mainstream" coverage that they believe will bring in casual audiences and it just doesn't work like that.  Yes, The Rock can pull a rating for a week. Yes, Cain Velasquez will get some articles written on him. It doesn't stick. 

Vince doesn’t want cool guys getting over, he probably fears losing them to Hollywood.

Its my number one conspiracy theory as to why he never turned Roman.

 

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1 hour ago, Ultimo Necro said:

Vince doesn’t want cool guys getting over, he probably fears losing them to Hollywood.

Its my number one conspiracy theory as to why he never turned Roman.

 

Roman was hugely over as a bad guy/tweener in the early days of The Shield. I don't know if Vince purposely neutered him but they certainly did him wrong. He's solidly over now but I fear if he was thrust into the title picture some may have flashbacks.

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