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WWE’s NXT Scores Heavyweight Audience With CW Debut As SmackDown Drives Success On USA Network

katie campione
·2-min read

WWE’s NXT will seemingly be a heavyweight in The CW’s Fall lineup.

The program, which moved from USA Network to The CW in a five-year deal that begins this month, debuted Tuesday on the broadcast network to its largest audience in a year, according to live + same-day Nielsen data.

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NXT secured 895,000 total viewers, up 44% compared to last week’s episode, which was the last on USA Network. The episode peaked with 965,000 total viewers from 8:15 to 8:30 p.m. ET.

It was The CW’s top telecast of the year among both adults 25-54 (406,000) and adults 18-49 (354,000), helping the network achieve a 143% increase over its Tuesday primetime season average.

While USA Network lost NXT, it gained SmackDown. That show has ranked No. 1 on cable two out of its first three weeks in its new home, after making the move from Fox. SmackDown’s debut on USAN wrangled 1.7M viewers, with 731,000 from the 18-49 demo.

Last week, SmackDown went head-to-head with its old network’s telecast of the Washington-Rutgers game, prevailing in the 18-49 demo with 602,000 viewers (compared to 512,000 for Fox’s Big 10 football coverage).

The episode was also up 5% in total viewers versus the week prior with 1.57M, which was just a tad below Fox’s 1.93M for Washington-Rutgers. This is a fairly significant feat for SmackDown, as it moved to a network with a lot less reach than Fox. The broadcaster is in roughly 120M homes versus the 70M or so homes with access to USAN.

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