Overnight numbers for last night’s SmackDown on Fox saw the show increase 0.8 percent over the previous week, averaging 2.186 million viewers.
That’s the highest overnight viewership for SmackDown since April 17. Last night’s show featured the televised return of Roman Reigns, week two of the ThunderDome, and SmackDown’s fallout from SummerSlam and build to Payback.
In the demo ratings, SmackDown averaged a 0.3 rating in the 18-34 category, topping all of network TV but down 14.3 percent from last Friday night.
In the 18-49 demo, SmackDown did a 0.6 rating, matching last week’s total and topping all of the networks.
Unlike most weeks, SmackDown did not finish at the bottom of the network shows in terms of overall TV viewership. It beat several other programs. Of the eight shows that aired on the major networks, SmackDown finished fourth and was second among the four shows that were not repeat programming, trailing only Dateline NBC, which averaged 2.288 million viewers.
After months of continually declining numbers, this is the fourth straight week that SmackDown has had an increase in overall viewership. The month of August had the highest average viewership for the show since May.
Here’s a look at the last 10 weeks of overnight viewership totals for SmackDown as well as key demo ratings: