College hoops does another number to WWE SmackDown’s numbers

The story behind SmackDown’s March 28 numbers is very similar to the one behind their March 28 numbers.

College basketball’s post-season took a chunk of the show’s audience, which was also likely impacted by the show from London being accessible live on Netflix (legally in most of the world, and by extra-legal means in the United States) before its initial U.S. broadcast on USA Network at 8 p.m. Eastern. But even with reduced ratings, SmackDown still outperformed everything but the NCAA Tournaments in the demographic advertisers covet.

The numbers come from Programming Insider. Last Friday’s SmackDown had an audience of 1,350,000 and did a .40 rating with 18-49 year olds. That’s another roughly 7% week-to-week decline in viewership, but about a 2.5% improvement in the demo. It was SmackDown’s lowest audience number of the year. You have to go back to last Dec. 20 and a show affected by similar circumstances — pre-taped against the College Football Playoff — for a smaller viewership total.

But again, SmackDown was the only non-NCAA Tournament program to land in last Friday’s primetime top ten. It finished second on cable and fifth overall. CBS’ late game between Michigan and Auburn won the night overall with a 1.85 rating from 7.34 million viewers, while Kentucky/Tennessee on TBS finished first on cable with a .60 and an overall audience of 2.88 million.

No men’s basketball and back to live for SmackDown this week, but the Women’s Final Four will be on ESPN. How big of a difference will that make as the Road to WrestleMania 41 gets shorter? When we find out, we’ll add the numbers to our running tally of the past year’s worth of SmackDown results:

* Moved from FOX to USA Network (broadcast to cable)
** Added a third hour

For complete results from the latest SmackDown, our live blog is here. To read a recap & review of the night’s events click here, For video highlights of the show click here.