Following a night in which the return of Vince McMahon led Raw to a 16 percent increase over the previous week, Tuesday’s SmackDown followed suit. After falling below two million viewers for the last two weeks, the show was all the way up to 2.281 million this week, an increase of 15 percent.
At 89 percent retention of the Raw audience, it was right in the range of what SmackDown has been doing recently. Year-over-year, SmackDown was still down 12 percent. The show did 2.578 million viewers on the same week in 2017, which was an average number at the time.
After falling out of the top 10 in overall cable TV ratings the last couple of weeks, SmackDown was up to seventh on Tuesday. It also returned to the number spot in the 18-49 demo with a 0.74 rating.
Though SmackDown is airing on Christmas night next week and expected to do a record low, WWE is promoting a strong show featuring matches that have been built up for the last several weeks with Jeff Hardy facing Samoa Joe and United States Champion Shinsuke Nakamura defending against Rusev.