WWE's NXT posts best viewership in a year with CW debut

WWE's NXT will apparently be a heavyweight on The CW's fall lineup.

The show, which moved from the USA Network to The CW as part of a five-year deal that begins this month, debuted on the network Tuesday and achieved its largest viewership in a year, according to live and same-day data from Nielsen.

NXT reached 895,000 total viewers, an increase of 44% compared to the previous episode, which was the last on USA Network. The episode peaked with 965,000 total viewers from 8:15 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET.

It was The CW's top-rated television show of the year in both adults 25-54 (406,000) and adults 18-49 (354,000), helping the network achieve a 143% increase over its primetime average on Tuesday.

While USA Network NXT lost, it won Smack down. This show ranked No. 1 on second cable television in its first three weeks in its new home following the move from Fox. Smack downThe debut on USAN reached 1.7 million viewers, including 731,000 in the 18-49 demo.

Last week, Smack down went head-to-head with its old network's broadcast of the Washington-Rutgers game, coming out on top in the 18-49 demo with 602,000 viewers (compared to 512,000 for Fox's Big 10 football -Reporting).

The episode's total viewership was also up 5% from the previous week at 1.57 million, which was just slightly below Fox's 1.93 million for Washington-Rutgers. This is a pretty significant achievement for Smack downas it moved to a network with much smaller reach than Fox. The channel is present in approximately 120 million households, compared to approximately 70 million households with access to USAN.