The April 25 episode of “WWE Smackdown” saw the final fallout from WrestleMania 41 as the WWE roster began to draw attention to the Backlash Premium Live event held in St. Louis, Missouri on May 10th. Motor City Machine Gun and #DIY are back to avoid becoming WWE Tag Team Champions in high-octane TLC matches.
As far as TV ratings go, it was a more mixed bag for WWE as programming insiders confirmed that the April 25 episode of “Smackdown” averaged a total of 1,599,000 viewers, marking 8% drops from 1,741,000 viewers the previous week. However, this was 3% higher than the four-week average, which is still at 1,555,000 viewers. In the 18-49 demographic, “Smackdown” recorded a number of 0.51, down 7% from the number of 0.55 posted seven days ago, but 9% above the average of 0.47 over the next four weeks.
But the main reason why the rating was such a mixed bag was the “Smackdown” competition that was faced on Friday night. Despite having a strong number placed first in the Network and Cable rankings for most weeks, the 0.51 number came third in the cable rankings, and fourth when including Network Telecast, mainly due to coverage on the second day of the NFL Draft and NBA playoff games between Boston Celtis and Orlando Magic. That said, “SmackDown” was able to rank higher than the two NHL Stanley Cup games and the coverage of the NBA and NFL drafts streamed on their respective services.
