By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
AEW Dynamite television show produced 889,000 viewers for Wednesday’s episode on TNT, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. The viewership count was down from the 1.104 million viewers who watched last week’s episode.
Powell’s POV: The second hour of Dynamite ran opposite the U.S. Presidential address. Dynamite finished tenth in the 18-49 demographic with a .33 in Wednesday’s cable ratings. Last week’s Dynamite finished second in the 18-49 demographic with a .37 rating.
Always another show, event or persons fault if the ratings drop, never AEW fault for putting on a bad show
It wasn’t a bad show. Continue to worship at the feet of your hero, Vinnie Mac
It was the second week in a row where literally every match on the show had someone other than the participants get involved. This is what it would look like if Vince Russo booked the Attitude Era without the star power of Austin and Rock to mask his incompetence.
A special needs chimp could do a better job running things than Tony and his EVPs are doing. The current product appeals to neckbeards and dirt sheet writers and nobody else.
It also seems to appeal to you as you apparently watch it every single week.
Usually on DVR, but only because most weeks have had a couple of good segments. The last two weeks have been some of the worst wrestling TV ever presented, rivaling the Herb Abrams UWF and Alperstein’s AWF. Of course, you can’t tell that from this site or most of the other dirt sheet writers who seem to have a hardon for spotfests and “workrate” matches over logical storytelling and characters that are actually over with the casual audience.
It feels like Khan was satisfied with pulling a good rating the first week they were unopposed and thought he could put straight garbage on and get the same result. That first unopposed show was good except for the Bucks sloppy spotfest to open and the clusterfuck TNT title match to close. The last two weeks have been everything that’s wrong with AEW and nothing that’s right with AEW.
What has Vince got to do with this? Why are AEW fanboys so obsessed with him?
If you don’t think that the presidential address was a factor then you are downright delusional. It was on multiple networks and related content finished in eight of the top ten cable rating slots. And, yes, I would have pointed out the same thing if the address had run opposite a WWE or Impact show. For instance, I’ll be pointing out that the NFL Draft runs opposite Impact and Smackdown this week regardless of whether their shows go up or down in the ratings.
Two terrible weeks of wrestling TV is the biggest part of why the ratings dropped.
They’ll get some bounce back next week, but they’re still going to settle in at around 900-950k at most.
The President address may have done a little damage but they would have pulled a lower number than last week regardless what was on. With the mostly sad state of wrestling in 2021,you’re going to constant up and
down when it comes to numbers.
A wrestler named 10 who has not won a single match on dynamite in 2021 was main eventing the show, wonder why the ratings went down, I mean has any member of the Dork Order won a match since the Brodie Lee tribute show? Unless teaming with page of course.
Lowest rated presidential address in forever attracts away from what I’m supposed to believe is a great television show? Sounds legit.
It’s still 27 million views. Of course it gonna be lower after one of the most… divisive presidents in history, but still that’s enough for making a dent.
The level of media literacy here is astounding
Back in the attitude Era nobody would have had to make excuses because nobody would have changed the channel. It really is the greatest time ever to be a wrestling fan.
You’re correct. Back when wrestling was at its peak, Wcw and wwf was going up against Monday night football and both were still pulling in massive numbers. If your product is as good as you say it is, then you should still be able to keep a large amount of your audience without having to worry about them drifting off.
4/21 ESPN had baseball on Wendesday night instead of basketball. Both NBA games on ESPN drew more viewers on 4/28 despite the Biden address.
Bravo showed Real Housewives of NJ both weeks in the same timeslot. 4/28 drew more viewers than 4/21 despite the Biden address.
Queen of the South on USA drew and increase of more than 200k viewers despite being up against the Biden address.
House Hunters and House Hunters International both saw viewership increases despite finishing lower in the ratings.
Nearly every top 50 show that aired both weeks saw numbers stay put or increase. The viewership spike on the news channels did not seem to effect anyone else the way it did AEW. I expect AEWs numbers to be back up to right around 1 million next week, because I do think part of their crowd watched the speech, but just a little time spent looking at actual viewership numbers would have shown that they lost more than just about anyone week over week from 4/21 to 4/28.
Now that’s how you completely destroy a moronic narrative.
It really doesn’t. I even had a laugh about it with someone who works in the industry. This person has a better understanding of TV ratings than I ever will, and has zero love for AEW for a variety of reasons. This person said he expected the number to be down and was surprised they didn’t lose even more viewers because of the speech. The idea of pointing out that other shows increased doesn’t mean much. So AEW viewers are less loyal or more political than Real Housewives viewers or NBA fans? Different audiences are, well, different.
What does it all mean? Really, nothing. I shrug off the week as an aberration, just as I do for Impact numbers dropping while running opposite the NFL Draft last night. WWE loaded up Smackdown opposite night two, which is smart. We’ll see how they do. But it’s such a waste of time to claim that Dynamite would have lost or gained viewers even if there was no speech on Wednesday because we’ll never know.
It’s also worth noting that the show seemed structured around the speech. It may have been a completely different show had there not been a speech that night. I mentioned in my Hit List that they seemed to load up the first hour, which aired prior to the speech. I’m not positive that they did, but Jake Barnett assumed the same thing when we chatted about it this week.
The funniest part is that I’ve pointed out when WWE or Impact ran against something notable, because it typically led to a drop in numbers or it was interesting if they held their ground. No one complained. But now we have so many team sport type of fans who love one company and hate the other that the mere mention of the show running opposite the speech led to cries that it was making excuses. No, it’s a fact, they really did run opposite the speech. Whether people want to believe that contributed to the number being down is entirely up to them, but it was pretty much universally assumed going in that the number would drop due to the speech and it did.
When did WWE lose 20% of its audience to anything during the Attitude Era? Of course all shows are going to lose something to any sort of event now. All wrestling shoes are just aweful. If they were good to anything but a small minority, nothing could take that huge of a percentage of the audience away from them. I seriously doubt they’ll bounce back.
Yes, the Attitude Era was great. But who is saying that anything we’re seeing today is as good as that was?
Kudos on ignoring the part where nearly everything else had an increase or no change in viewership. I guess confronting the reality that AEW was 1 of only 2-3 shows from the previous week’s top 50 that lost viewers doesn’t help your constant defense of their terrible product.
Again, different audiences do different things. For instance, are you really surprised that the Real Housewives audience didn’t shift to the speech? They presumably don’t lose a bunch of viewers to big Monday Night Football games either, but that doesn’t mean Raw won’t affected by the same game. The NBA was up over MLB the week before? I don’t pay attention to either sport’s ratings, but is the NBA typically a bigger ratings draw than MLB? Did you break down how the teams that played on both nights typically draw?
I could go on and on, but I believe you even conceded that it would drop to some extent, so what’s all the fuss over? Because it dropped more than you anticipated? It’s one week and special circumstances. I don’t live and die by these weekly ratings. I look for trends. If the numbers continue to drop, then there’s a problem. If they bounce back, there’s not a problem even if you personally think the booking is the shits. Why not let it play out rather than act like the sky is falling? What am I missing?
And constant defense? I call every show as I see it, regardless of the company. I don’t play favorites. Never have, never will. Could it be that I simply enjoy their product more than you do? You come off like you hate watch this product every week. That’s you’re right, but I can’t really say that I get it. I don’t enjoy the NBA, but I don’t find a game to watch every week and then piss and moan about how it’s not as good as it was when I once enjoyed their product, I just moved on. It’s not like there aren’t a shit ton of other wrestling shows that you could watch instead. No snark here. I’m asking sincerely, what is it about this company’s product that you clearly despise that makes you keep coming back for more?
So just to get this straight, your take is that wrestling fans are just more political than fans of any other show? I don’t remember that being a distinguishing feature.
Looks like they were on this night. AEW has actually taken viewership hits on big cable news nights in the past. So now I’d like you to explain why the Dynamite number was expected to drop due to the speech and did drop, yet somehow it’s a controversy. While you’re at it, I just ran the Smackdown overnight numbers. Are you going to piss and moan because I listed that it ran opposite the second night of the NFL Draft (just as I mentioned that Impact ran opposite night one of the draft) or is this just some weird anti-AEW thing?
Jason isn’t going to say it but deep down he knows that aew fans are not loyal to their product. Sure they may appear to be a rapid fan base but a sizable portion are not. And no a Presidential speech or some type of major sporting event isn’t going to dictate aew numbers because the majority of their fanbase isn’t interested in sports or politics. You would most likely see aew fans more interested in shows on twitch, gaming or ironic comedy stuff. Now you could see a major event slightly effect wwe audience…but even then it wouldn’t put too much of a dent in their product either.
If I felt that were true, I’d have no problem saying it. So WWE gets a rightful pass if there’s a big game or something in the news that takes viewers away, but AEW doesn’t get the same benefit of the doubt because they draw a younger audience than WWE? At this point, I feel like nothing short of writing “AEW bad, WWE good” will appease some of you. It’s not a team sport. This isn’t Red Sox vs. Yankees. You don’t have to choose sides.
Wwe numbers is hurt by sports about as much if they have a bad show…very little. For the past year and a half, wwe has drawn anywhere from 1.8 to 2.0 consistantly. Those numbers aren’t anything to brag about and Vince’s company product itself is pretty awful now However, they do have a devoted fanbase. Aew, on the other hand, is a con flip just about every week. Which tells me is that there are probably people who just dip in to see what’s its all about or if they have a celebrity on and tune out afterwards.
AEW does good = uhhh…nothing on Twitch that night!
AEW does bad = the product fucking sucks
Now this here is some good ol confirmation bias! Not as rare a find in the wild lately, but we still point it out.