Last week's WWE Smackdown ratings were down, hitting a viewership low of 1.147 million viewers and a 0.28 18-49 demographic rating. While some make excuses for the time (taped in France), this has been a trend for some time now. Viewers all have their own unique reasons for either not watching Smackdown, or not watching the entire show.
The low viewership numbers were why they made the decision to cut an hour down to a 2-hour showtime back in July. When it comes to the ratings concerns for Smackdown, the issue with the programming isn't the duration of the show. Here are three changes to fix Friday Night Smackdown.
Smackdown Needs To Put More Focus On Character Development/Midcard Scene
In comparison to Raw on Netflix, WWE Smackdown has seemed to get away from building new stars. Raw has done a great job at elevating new stars like Bronson Reed, Bron Breakker, Dominik Mysterio, Roxanne Perez, and Stephanie Vaquer just to name a few. Meanwhile, Smackdown hasn't quite done the same. Tiffany Stratton remains the WWE Women's Champion and it doesn't exactly feel like they're doing her justice with her booking since winning the belt earlier this year. Although she is a young star, there's still plenty of other young stars on the roster that haven't gotten the necessary television time. Essentially, it needs more long-term stories and less filler.
For example, Carmelo Hayes was a first round draft pick for the brand in last year's WWE Draft. He made his debut by facing the Undisputed Champion in Cody Rhodes and hasn't done a whole lot since. He was featured in a feud for the United States Championship that was short lived.
The women's midcard title scene has been night and day in comparison to Raw's Women Intercontinental Champion Becky Lynch. While the IC title scene has been red hot and arguably one of the brighter storylines on Raw all year, Smackdown can't say the same -- in fact, the complete opposite. Chelsea Green won the Women's United States Championship and lost it to Zelina Vega, who lost it to Giulia. She's an absolute star and there is potential with pairing her with Kiana James as her manager, but all was lost when James was pinned in a 5-second match. Smackdown has to put more focus on building their young and new stars and on the midcard scene.
Smackdown Needs To Capitalize On Stacked Tag Team Division
With so many tag teams including The Wyatt Sicks, Street Profits, Fraxiom, Motor City Machine Guns, Legado Del Fantasma, Pretty Deadly, DIY, LWO, and The Bloodline, Smackdown has an opportunity that no other brand has -- showcase stacked tag team wrestling on a weekly basis. There's a lot of creative storylines and matches that are possible with this many tag teams in the picture. While it improved significantly over the past few months, there's still so much that could be done and they've only scratched the surface creative wise.
The best part about having multiple weekly shows is that they're all different. All shows have their strengths and weaknesses, but one thing that Smackdown has that is heads and shoulders better than any other weekly wrestling show is a quality tag team division. Summerslam's WWE Tag Team Championship match was a perfect example of what could be done. It was exciting and showcased the tag division in front of a huge audience. To think it didn't include a few other legitimate tag teams as well. Not that every match has to be a TLC match, but just more chaos within the division would be great on a weekly basis.
When The Bloodline Run Smackdown, The Show Is Great
For the past few years, The Bloodline has been the biggest storyline in all of professional wrestling. More particularly, Smackdown has benefited from The Bloodline storyline and quite frankly has been carried by it. It's obvious now that in addition to Roman Reigns being the heavily focused superstar during the story, it also feels like without the WWE Universal Championship being included with them, it doesn't feel the same. The company has thrived off creating dominant factions for many years, but even more so as of late -- Smackdown doesn't feel like it has that anymore.
A huge change to switch things up on Smackdown would be for Cody Rhodes to lose the title to a member of The Bloodline. Solo Sikoa had multiple opportunities at the title prior to Reigns' return last year at Summerslam, but came up short. He's a different beast now as he has held main roster gold and is now more dangerous than ever before with the monster Talla Tonga on his side replacing Jacob Fatu. He also has JC Mateo and Tonga Loa and assuming Tama Tonga when he returns. Smackdown is a more entertaining show when The Bloodline are the main event/aka main attraction.