With Night of Champions firmly within the rear-view mirror, the July 4 episode of “WWE SmackDown” was not only the primary two-hour episode of WWE’s blue brand in over six months (a move that will probably be everlasting going forward), however it was one which took major steps towards each Saturday Night’s Most important Event and Evolution 2 on July 12 and 13 respectively. Drew McIntyre returned to establish a match with Randy Orton, Trish Stratus also returned to challenge Tiffany Stratton to a title match at Evolution 2, and each Jimmy Uso and Jacob Fatu got the higher of JC Mateo and Solo Sikoa within the major event.
With all that said, as a result of it being a national holiday on the Fourth of July, not numerous people were sitting in front of their TVs watching “SmackDown.” In truth, The Programming Insider has confirmed that the July 4 episode averaged a complete of 1,166,000 viewers, a 20% drop from each the 1,450,000 viewers from the June 27 episode, and the trailing 4 week average of the identical figure. This can be the bottom viewership for a non-preempted “SmackDown” in history, with only the December 29, 2023 “Better of” episode coming close, but this drop was to be expected as each “WWE Raw” and “WWE NXT” saw major drops in viewership once they aired on July 4 in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
Within the 18-49 demographic, the July 4 episode posted a 0.32 number, a 22% drop from the 0.41 that was posted every week earlier, and 20% lower than the trailing 4 week average of 0.40. While this was the bottom number posted within the demographic for the reason that aforementioned December 29, 2023 episode, it wasn’t all bad for “SmackDown” as the dearth of competition meant that the show easily strolled into the highest spot for the night on cable within the 18-49 demographic, and third for the night when including network telecasts, only being beaten by the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular which aired on NBC.