SmackDown 900 Gets Huge Ratings Boost

SmackDown’s ratings were way down for last week, but that’s to be expected since they were going on against Tuesday night election coverage. This week’s appearances by Edge and the Undertaker, and a big title match ahead of Sunday’s pay-per-view, were just what the show needed to get ratings back on track.

The show averaged 2.725 million viewers, a 42% increase from last week. This is the third best rating SmackDown has had since the Draft in July. Raw drew 2.870 million viewers this week, an increase as a result of the Lesnar/Goldberg confrontation, so SmackDown is catching up.

SmackDown trailed various FOX News shows, but beat out the opening of the college basketball season. This 900th episode was heavily advertised, featuring the return of both Edge and the Undertaker. With the latter legend seeming to announce a regular return to the roster of SmackDown, his appearance should continue to mean good things for the show’s ratings.

I’m almost surprised that the ratings haven’t been wrangled into WWE’s weekly storytelling, given the Raw versus SmackDown theme of Survivor Series this Sunday. All signs point to SmackDown as the scrappy underdog, with big, mean, ol’ Raw playing the established heel. Will that play into Survivor Series? A hardcore Canadian crowd is likely to let their opinion be known more than most, so we’ll see.