Another week, another report on the Wednesday night wrestling ratings. Two weeks ago AEW Dynamite was back on top, having bounced back from its low Thanksgiving Eve numbers. Then last week, the overall viewership was exactly tied between Dynamite and NXT, but AEW still had the highest rating in the key 18-49 demographic, which they’d maintained from the beginning. This week, it’s a whole new ballgame.
As reported by Showbuzz Daily, NXT’s strategy of loading up the last episode of the year with big title matches paid off, as the show not only had more viewers than AEW’s more standard episode, it beat them in the 18-49 demo for the first time ever.
AEW Dynamite had 683,000 viewers on TNT this week, down nearly 100,000 from last week. They also got a .25 rating in the demo, the lowest since the show began.
NXT, on the other hand, gained some viewers on USA for a total of 795,000. Perhaps more importantly, their 18-49 demo rating went up .03 points to .27, putting them above Dynamite for the first time.
Naturally, a lot of people are going to attempt to prognosticate about what this means for the future, as if any of us really understand the arcane science of TV ratings. Regardless of that, it was a solid victory for NXT, and a validation of having women’s matches in the main event, as NXT did last night.
