By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Friday’s AEW Dynamite television show produced 426,000 viewers for TNT, according to Wade Keller of PWTorch.com. The viewership count was down from the 526,000 viewership mark for the previous week’s episode.
Powell’s POV: Dynamite finished with a .19 in the 18-49 demographic. The previous week’s Dynamite delivered a .20 rating in the 18-49 demographic. Keller also noted that the previous week’s Dynamite viewership improved to 817,000 with the three-day DVR numbers. Even so, the decline this week compared to the Friday of Memorial Day weekend edition is bad.
Do you think based on the ratings of the last 2 weeks in the Friday night 10pm spot they should consider putting the second show (rampage I think) on a different day and time? Would 6:05pm on Saturday be better? I know there are the nhl & nba playoffs but I did not think the ratings would dip below 700,000. I felt they had found their stride once they went unopposed on Wednesday. I thought besides their loyal fan base, they would get some of the Smackdown audience. I’m surprised the numbers have been this low. I guess my concern would be if Dynamite can’t draw an audience for the go home and post show to one of their big events, honestly how well will the “B” show do in that same time spot?
There’s not many places they can go and expect to do better, in part because Tony Khan has stated that he doesn’t want to run opposite the NFL. So that eliminates Sundays, Mondays, and Thursdays. Wednesday is also out because they don’t want to do three hours (see Raw/Nitro). Some fans will push for Saturdays in the old WCW slot, but it’s not prime time and really wouldn’t be a good slot in 2021. So you’re realistically looking at Tuesdays or Fridays. If they go with Tuesdays in the 10ET slot, there’s always a chance that NXT changes time slots to run opposite AEW again. That’s not an option for Smackdown on Fox, which goes to local news at 10ET. So with all that in mind, Friday is the night. And Rampage may do better as a one-hour show than Dynamite is now as a two-hour show with an hour running out of prime time on Friday nights. Only time will tell.
ACTUALLY, I would not be surprised if the one hour rampage show is moved to a different timeslot away from fridays once it hits the tbs network.
With tnt, you are really limited because tnt needs tuesdays and thursdays for nba games. wednesday is dynamite. Friday at 10 pm is just a temporary timeslot because aew wanted to start the show on tnt in august instead of holding the debut in january on tbs.
I wonder if they need to look at 7pm ET on Friday when Rampage starts. The one hour lead in to Smackdown might work better for them than going the other direction.
Interesting idea. Not sure if TNT would go for it. I can’t say I know for sure how it works, but I believe they would make less ad money if the show doesn’t air in prime time.
Is 10pm on Friday really primetime?
When Dukes of Hazzard and Dallas were the top 2 shows in the country, they ran from 8-10pm ET on Friday. The TGIF schedule was the same. Falcon Crest and 20/20 didn’t really approach those lead-in shows in ratings.
I know the 10-11 spot is highly rated on other nights, but I wonder if networks get the same kind of ad rates for that block on Friday and if 7 might draw more viewers before they head out for the weekend.
Yes, the first hour of Friday Dynamite runs in prime time. It’s considered 7-10CT or 8-11ET. One of the issues they would encounter if they started at 6CT/7ET is that they do intend to run some live shows on Friday nights. That’s an early start in the central time zone and would eliminate anything further west. But I guess it’s not a huge deal if they don’t intend to do a lot of live Friday shows.
I thought they’d keep their numbers higher on these Friday episodes, but they were dropping around 100k a week before that and the last 3-4 weeks of Dynamite have been the worst wrestling TV I’ve seen since at least the Herb Abrams UWF days, if not the AWA on ESPN days (and yes, most of Raw is only a millimeter higher on the WrestleCrap meter right now).
Even so, I thought their fanbase would stick with things more than most, since they seemed to have a solid 650-700k that would watch no matter what. The DVR numbers for the 3 day viewing make sense, and it will be very interesting to see what happens when they go back to their usual night and timeslot in a few weeks. They may have to hotshot some matches or have another celebrity on to get some folks back on board.
Wait, so now DVR numbers are included in aew viewership? Will dvr numbers be included in raw, nxt, smackdown as well?
Wade had the numbers in his report, so I guess you can ask him. I believe he does get DVR numbers for the other shows, so possibly.
The way things are going for aew, I wouldn’t be surprised if slip down to 300k territory. I think after this coming Friday they’re going to be on Saturday so 300k is a realistic possibility.
Friday at 10pm for wrestling is not good for anybody