TV ratings: They’re hard to understand in the first place, and nobody’s really sure what they mean in this era of infinite digital options, but wrestling fans just can’t stop talking about them. Especially not now that we’ve got two wrestling shows going head to head again, with NXT and AEW Dynamite both airing on Wednesday nights. Since the first week, however, the stories have been pretty much the same. Like last week, and the week before, the numbers are down, but AEW’s still on top. Last night was particularly rough, with the MLB World Series overlapping with the start of the NBA season, to give people a lot of stuff to watch besides Pro Wrestling.
AEW Dynamite dropped below 1 million viewers for the first time this week, drawing only 963,000 on TNT. That’s still 38% higher than NXT, which drew 698,000 viewers on USA.
AEW came in fourth on cable among adults between the ages of 18 and 49, behind two NBA Games and FX’s American Horror Story. NXT came in twenty-first among that same demographic. Ratings-wise, AEW was at 0.45 in the 18-49 demo, while NXT was at 0.21. Those key numbers are holding pretty steady, having been 0.44 for AEW and 0.20 for NXT last week.
In total viewership, AEW ranked #24 this week, and NXT ranked #33. AEW Dynamite lost 5% in viewership from last week, whereas NXT was only down 2%.
An NBA game, the Celtics versus the 76ers, topped the 18-49 demo on cable Wednesday night with a 0.76 rating and 1.698 million viewers. The World Series on FOX was the most watched thing on network TV with 11.925 million viewers. That World Series game also owned the 18-49 demographic with a 2.9 rating.
I’m not going to make any assumptions about what kind of numbers USA and TNT are looking for, or what this means for the future, but if we’re going to have to keep reporting this news, I hope there’s eventually a story besides “everybody’s down again.”
