By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show produced 963,000 viewers for Wednesday’s episode on TNT, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. The viewership count was down from the 1.014 million viewers who watched last week’s episode.
Powell’s POV: AEW finished fourth in the cable ratings in the 18-49 demographic. AEW won the weekly battle over NXT by 251,000 viewers. The World Series game led television viewership with 11.925 million viewers for Fox, and the NBA on ESPN scored 1.698 million viewers.
Damn AEW is so great they’ve lost almost half a million viewers in a month.
Now we wait for the homers to come in and proclaim that WWE’s C show has done the same so it’s not a big deal.
Considering the world series numbers that’s not bad and weren’t they 5th in the 18-49 demo last week.
For me, I will not use World Series as an excuse for the drop in ratings of both shows. Especially when according to Game 2 was the lowest rated game 2 of a World Series since 2012.
With AEW, no excuse, you’re suppose to be the hot product. You’re suppose to handle tough competition. Going from 1.4 million viewers to now 964K. Not good.
Mediocre to bad “wrestling” company with a show that is just boring.
Flippy midgets who can’t work don’t bring ratings.
Aew has to be worried at least some. 4th straight week losing viewers plus clearly not a sell out last night. Nosebleeds had sections tarped off and plenty of empty seats and a few rows in the lower bowl. I saw this on tv so I’m sure I didnt see even close to all of the empty seats . Nxt is a development league for a reason so I doubt they even expect the ratings to be as high as they already are. All nxts rating proves is that the big draw for the show, finn valor, draws just as poorly in nxt as he did in wwe
The problem with wrestling in 2019 is that the sport isn’t popular with the mainstream audience like it was in the ’80s and late ’90s. I keep hearing everyone talk about this “boom period” but I don’t see it right now. It’s more niche/hardcore.
I do think AEW still has a chance to reach a mass audience, but to do that they need to have a more focused approach. It seems like they’re trying to do a little too much at times.