By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite television show produced 969,000 viewers for TBS, according to Showbuzzdaily.com. The viewership count was down from the 1.010 million viewership total from last week.
Powell’s POV: Dynamite finished third in the 18-49 demo in Wednesday’s cable ratings with a 0.39 rating, down from last week’s 0.43 in the same demo. Monday’s WWE Raw finished with a 0.39 rating in the same demo, though Raw aired opposite the college football national championship game. Dynamite finished behind a pair of NBA games in Wednesday’s rating battle.
But wasn’t the west coast live feed going to solve all their viewership problems?
What are their viewership problems? Numbers look good to me and pretty much everyone else.
The AEW Twatterverse, and even Powell, maid multiple mentions of their viewership being lower than it was back in September/October because of the TNT west coast feed airing at 5pm Pacific instead of 8pm like it had before. TBS airs the west coast feed at 8pm Pacific and it’s done literally nothing for the viewership.
The last two weeks on TNT were 1,020,000 and 975,000 in viewership while the first two on TBS have been 1,010,000 and 969,000 despite TBS being in more households and AEW advertising the hell out of the move.
It was just another BS excuse from the IWC trying to explain why, outside of hotshotting a big card or debuting ex WWE guys, AEW’s audience is capped at the smallest of any company ever with a national TV deal.
Next week AEW is running Dynamite and Rampage from the 4200 seat minor league basketball arena in DC where 1) the stage/entrance area blocks off at least 500-1000 seats and 2) there are currently about 100 seats still unsold. They are exhibit A of how the Meltzerfication of pro wrestling, i.e. the focus on “work rate” over size and personality, has brought on the least watched and least culturally relevant era since at least the Hogan era if not of all time.
The viewership seems to have a hard ceiling for now. I don’t know what you mean my the Hogan era but if you are referring to 80’s WWF I thought that they did pretty well for themselves, certainly in comparison to the competition. Hogan at the time transcended the sport and gave more visibility more-so than any other pro wrestler in other eras. They didn’t have the same type of programming back then so comparisons to today can’t be aptly made.