Final numbers are in for this past Friday’s New Year’s Day episode of SmackDown on Fox. The show averaged 2.013 million viewers, which is up from the 1.915 million viewers it had done in the fast nationals.
SmackDown was down 39.1 percent in viewership from the previous week, but the Christmas Day edition of the show had been bolstered by a massive lead-in from NFL football.
On a night where all the other stations aired repeat programming, SmackDown drew the lowest viewership on the networks with nothing else falling below 2.1 million. SmackDown did face massive competition in the form of the College Football Playoff semifinal game between Ohio State and Clemson on ESPN. The game averaged more than 18.5 million viewers directly opposite SmackDown.
SmackDown drew a 0.53 rating in the 18-49 demo, well above anything else on network TV. The number was down 44.8 percent from the previous week’s Christmas Day episode.
In the 18-34 demo, SmackDown also led the networks with a 0.35 rating. That number was down 48.5 percent from the previous week.
Year-over-year, SmackDown was down 16.6 percent in overall viewers, 24.3 percent in 18-49, and 30 percent in 18-34.