SmackDown ratings way up for loaded 900th episode

Tuesday night’s heavily hyped 900th episode of SmackDown earned the show’s third highest ratings since the draft special in July.

Featuring Edge and The Undertaker, the show averaged 2.725 million viewers, up 42 percent from last week’s show, which went against election coverage. It was the highest number since the August 29th show, which did 2.835 million viewers.

SmackDown finished seventh for the night in viewership, behind various shows on the FOX News channel. It was second for the night in the 18-49 demo with a 0.95 rating, trailing only the college football rankings show on ESPN, which did a 1.01.

There was no real heavy sports competition aside from the opening to the college basketball season, with did 2.083 million viewers opposite SmackDown.

SmackDown did retain almost 95% of the Raw audience the night before, which is a good sign as that show was up as well featuring the face-to-face confrontation between Brock Lesnar and Goldberg.

Here are the ratings for SmackDown as compared to Raw since the brand split in July: