WWE SmackDown Viewership, Rating Trend Upward For 5/21 Episode

Following rather paltry numbers for last week's WrestleMania Backlash go-home show, both the overnight viewership and rating for this week's WWE SmackDown trickled up a little bit.

Per TV Line*, the May 21 episode of SmackDown averaged 1,830,000 viewers, a slight increase from the 1,800,000 viewers for last week's show.

While the viewership average did increase, it's still down a ways from the modern SmackDown norm of slightly over two million viewers a week. Last week's viewership was the lowest since December 18 (when SmackDown was moved to FS1, due to college football).

In better news, the 18-49 demo rating increased to a .50, after dropping to a .40 last week. That .40 rating was down heavily from the .60 garnered by the "Throwback" edition of SmackDown on May 7.

SmackDown tied for the nightly win in 18-49 with ABC's Shark Tank (which nearly doubled SmackDown's overall audience with 3.4 million viewers).

* The usual source for wrestling TV ratings, Showbuzz Daily, is currently undergoing maintenance. Showbuzz generally provides a more in depth analysis of demo ratings than what is listed in this report.