With Night of Champions firmly in the rear-view mirror, the July 4 episode of "WWE SmackDown" was not only the first two-hour episode of WWE's blue brand in over six months (a move that will be permanent going forward), but it was one that took major steps towards both Saturday Night's Main Event and Evolution 2 on July 12 and 13 respectively. Drew McIntyre returned to set up a match with Randy Orton, Trish Stratus also returned to challenge Tiffany Stratton to a title match at Evolution 2, and both Jimmy Uso and Jacob Fatu got the better of JC Mateo and Solo Sikoa in the main event.
With all that said, due to it being a national holiday on the Fourth of July, not a lot of people were sitting in front of their TVs watching "SmackDown." In fact, The Programming Insider has confirmed that the July 4 episode averaged a total of 1,166,000 viewers, a 20% drop from both the 1,450,000 viewers from the June 27 episode, and the trailing four week average of the same figure. This is also the lowest viewership for a non-preempted "SmackDown"in history, with only the December 29, 2023 "Best of" episode coming close, but this drop was to be expected as both "WWE Raw" and "WWE NXT" saw major drops in viewership when they aired on July 4 in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
In the 18-49 demographic, the July 4 episode posted a 0.32 number, a 22% drop from the 0.41 that was posted a week earlier, and 20% lower than the trailing four week average of 0.40. While this was the lowest number posted in the demographic since the aforementioned December 29, 2023 episode, it wasn't all bad for "SmackDown" as the lack of competition meant that the show easily strolled into the top spot for the night on cable in 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.
