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WWE’s “Friday Night SmackDown” honoring recently deceased wrestlers Bray Wyatt and Terry Funk drew in the biggest audience the Fox program has seen since 2020.
Friday’s episode, which followed the deaths of Wyatt and Funk earlier in the week, scored an average 0.78 rating in the key broadcast demographic among adults 18-49 — the highest rating of the night — and drew in 2.65 million viewers, making it the highest viewed episode since Christmas day of 2020. “Friday Night SmackDown” also averaged 1.02 million viewers ages 18-49, scoring the highest viewership in the demo also since the 2020 Christmas episode.
With “Friday Night SmackDown” holding down Friday night primetime programming for Fox, the episode boosted Fox to score the highest rating of the night among the major broadcasters, as well as the second-highest total viewership.
Here’s how primetime broke down across the major broadcast networks:
After Fox, CBS scored the second-highest average rating of the night with a 0.67 rating and came in first place in terms of total viewership with 3.44 million total viewers thanks to the NFL pre-season game between the Lions and the Panthers that drew in the highest viewership of the night.
Next came NBC, which came in third place ratings-wise with an average 0.20 rating, and came in fourth place for total viewership with an average viewership of 1.75 million. At 8 p.m. “American Ninja Warrior” kicked off the night with a 0.19 rating and a total viewership of 1.51 million before “Dateline Classic” at 9 p.m. earned a rating of 0.20 and brought in 1.87 million viewers.
ABC came in fourth place in ratings with an average 0.16 rating, while coming in third place in total viewership with an average 1.85 million viewers. “Will Trent” garnered a 0.17 rating and brought in 1.97 million viewers while “20/20” scored a rating of 0.16 and drew in a viewership of 1.79.
The CW came in fifth place both in the demo with an average 0.03 rating and in total viewers with 288,000 viewers. At 8 p.m. “Family Law” scored a rating of 0.02 and a total viewership of 355,000 before “Moonshine” at 9 p.m. brought in a rating of 0.03 and drew in 221,000 viewers.
Neither The CW nor Fox air primetime programming at 10 p.m.
Among the Spanish-language networks, Univision scored the highest average rating and viewership of primetime with a 0.3 rating in the demo and 1.3 million total viewers. At 8 p.m. “Eternamente Amándonos” kicked off the night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. with a rating of 0.3 and 1.17 million viewers before “Tierra de esperanza” scored a 0.4 rating and drew in 1.41 million total viewers at 9 p.m. “Mujer” closed out the night at 10 p.m. with a rating of 0.3 in the demo and a viewership of 1.26 million.
Telemundo came in second place in ratings and total viewership with an average rating score of 0.2 and a total viewership of 696,000. Reality competition series “Los 50” earned a rating of 0.2 and drew in 830,000 viewers during its 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. airing before “Secretos de Sangre” wrapped up the night at 9 p.m. with a 0.1 rating and 614,000 total viewers.
