Has WWE ‘SmackDown’ Been a Boon for Fox, or a Billion-Dollar Bust?

Tonight marks three weeks into the great (both in terms of its scale and price) Fox “Friday Night SmackDown” experiment. That’s just enough time for rabid fans to have formed their snap judgments about whether the WWE show is a success on broadcast TV, or if there are already red flags for the blue brand. We’ll attempt to inject a little professionalism into the debate about the pro-wrestling property’s performance. In Fall 2018, Fox averaged a 1.3 rating in the key adults 18-49 demographic and 5.241 million total viewers in primetime on the first Friday of the TV season, anchored by the network’s debut of Tim Allen’s “Last Man Standing,” according to Nielsen’s Live + Same Day ratings. Also Read: Fox's 'Friday Night SmackDown' Sheds a Quarter of Its Debut Audience in Week 2 That was followed with an average of a 1.0 rating and 4.107 million total viewers for both the second and third Fridays. Yes, consistency had set in. This year, Fox’s new and expensive property “Friday Night SmackDown” filled the two-hour primetime window, initially posting an average of a 1.4 rating and 3.888 million total viewers, according to the same ratings metric, and then the next week...

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