Rampage rating rebounds nicely after record low

The ratings are in for Aug. 5.

AEW’s Friday night show is coming off some historically bad numbers, while WWE’s been riding a wave of excitement with Triple H taking over creative. Strangely enough, the show that improved on July 29’s ratings wasn’t SmackDown, but Rampage.

A live show gave Rampage an audience of 468,000 (25% better than the Friday before) and a .15 rating among 18-49 year olds (a 36% week-to-week improvement). Competition wasn’t terribly impressive to kick off a summer weekend, but AEW shot all the way up to fifth among cable originals.

Despite being a SummerSlam fallout episode with Roman Reigns advertised, SmackDown’s numbers dropped for the second week in a row. Of course, the peaks their falling from were pretty high — the edition that aired hours after Vince McMahon “retired” on July 22, but declines are declines. Viewership was down a little less than 5% from last Friday, coming in at 2.09 million. The demo number of .49 was a more than 5% dip... but WWE and FOX aren’t sweating those figures since the blue brand remained the highest rated show on television by a comfortable margin.

Can AEW hold that audience for a pre-taped show? Will the surprise ending of SmackDown bring people back this Friday?

Let us know what you think, ratings watching Cagesiders.

Numbers via Showbuzz Daily