Dave Meltzer Shares Reaction To WWE SmackDown Ratings From 'Both Sides'

This past Friday, "WWE SmackDown" posted a historic low rating on the USA Network, having drawn just 1,030,000 viewers and a 0.23 in the key 18-49 demographic. Throughout the last week, viewership for all of professional wrestling has been down across the board since Nielsen introduced its new "Big Data + Panel" model, which aims to provide a more accurate system for tracking television ratings. Although "WWE Raw" remains unaffected by the update due to the program streaming on Netflix, "SmackDown's" numbers were beyond concerning for WWE and the USA Network, whose reaction to Friday's viewership totals was revealed by Dave Meltzer in a recent edition of the "Wrestling Observer Radio."

"When that number came out last night, I mean, I saw a lot of people on both sides panicking because it was just so much lower and it was lower even than the old system last week. Now all of the sudden it's like, it's one thing when you're doing a 0.35 and you're going okay, we're down 20% with this new system, it isn't good, but when it's a 0.23, that's a major difference," Meltzer explained. "So far, man it's really bad, can't be overstated. Again when you're talking about the amount of money that USA is paying and look, it's still better than anything else that USA's doing, it's not like they're going to cancel it, but the money being spent for it seems bad."

Along with "SmackDown's" viewership dropping, "Raw" posted a record low rating on Netflix for the September 29 edition of the show, despite not being impacted by the "Big Data + Panel" system. The red brand drew 2.3 million viewers across 7 days, as the show continues to struggle with the NFL dominating Monday nights.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Wrestling Observer Radio" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.