The Wednesday Night War *Spoilers for AEW and NXT*

sky88 wrote: »

Seen a tweet earlier saying the 3rd hour of raw has more viewers than nxt/aew which I think says it all about wrestling.


There’s more money in wrestling than ever before but honestly feel it’ll hit rock bottom soon wrestling just isn’t as popular anymore regardless of how good shows are or aren’t

And the third hour is normally the one where the viewers drop off. As bad as the raw viewership is it's unfair to compare NXT and AEW to it because Raw had a 21 year and 26 year head start respectfully on this shows.

Johnny Sausage wrote: »

21 and 26

nearly added 10 years to my life reading that

I had 21 and 26 written and then changed it. No idea why I did that. Given I'm only 34 my numbers make even less sense.

So reading the Dynamite is the most DVR'd wrestling show ahead of RAW, Smackdown and NXT.


When Live and DVR numbers are taken into account it's averaging 1.5m viewers a week.

That dvr is so moving the goalpost stuff it’s like should we include YouTube hits too next

An NXT flag would be black and gold. What would the AEW colours be?

None of it is a bad thing. The stats your quoting, though, are clear goalpost-moving, just like the demos argument. “Oh it doesn’t matter they beat us in the ratings, we won the demo.” “Oh it doesn’t matter that they beat us in the demo, more people DVR us.” It’s like how radio stations will try manipulate the JNLR ratings that come out to say they’re number one, even if they’re number one in the ratings with farmers named Fergal from Buncranny. Part of having a reasoned discussion is reading through that waffle, hence people pointing it out.

I’m all for everyone saying let’s forget about the ratings and be happy with all the cool wrestling we’re getting from motivated companies, but if you’re gonna analyse the ratings (and there is a fun discussion to be had) then we have to look at the actual truth and not blindly buy into the spin either side is going to put out to make their product seem better. This isn’t helped, admittedly, by ‘journalists’ being biased and playing into the spin for the side they like best to confuse matters, to be fair.

Great to be back near million for aew

why in the hell over 500k people watched a glorified clipshow astounds me



https://twitter.com/AlexM_talkSPORT/status/1213123219332435974?s=20

Good for AEW, was a stacked show. Is ro**** actually Irish? Censoring cos they're def the type to google themselves

OneEightSeven wrote: »

I turned NXT off after 10 mins. Don't know how +500k people could watch some shítty recap show instead of AEW.

Maybe AEW doesn't appeal to them?

NXT just feels too sanitised for me, always in the same location and nothing ever feels different or must see.

In comparison AEW has a very vibrant and anything can happen kinda feel, different arenas, the upcoming cruise episode, their wrestlers appearing in other companies etc. Combined with Mox, Jericho, PAC, Omega, Luchas being big attractions AEW is just all round a better watch.

Thought I'd give this a bump to see how people feel a year on.

Dynamite has settled into the lead at this point but I think last night's show was indicative of a show that, while long term storytelling is clearly on display, there still seems to be an element of trying to nail everything to the wall week to week to be the ratings winner.

We had two prominent and developing stories in Omega's and and Sting's last night, and both took the same road; a lot of talk and a lot of subterfuge. I mean Kenny and Don basically cut the same promo Tuesday night so there's definitely a feeling of we know the destination, but we'll stumble through certain scenes when we've got nothing else.

NXT on the other hand has had some very average nights over the past year in what has been one marred by the pandemic, injuries, unnecessary call ups and a stagnating roster. But it is interesting to me that while Sting did and said nothing other than turn up to get a bump in ratings, NXT were developing new and interesting stories with Priest, Balor, Kross and Gargano's new faction. Maybe that's the result of NXT finally coming out of their own difficult transitional period.

Essentially I feel the War is dead, for NXT anyway. They've given up on competing week to week and that's starting to give positive returns.

AEW have done A LOT this year, and achieved a lot in that period. Dynamite really is a show that has demonstrated itself to be in a different league at times and at this point I probably watch more of it than Raw or SmackDown. However they need to be weary of falling into any false sense of security by overegging their position. No one needs a stacked show every week, especially if half of it isn't up to much.

Just watching NXT highlights. Finn and Pete Dunne are terrible on the mic god bless them. Also Scarlett bloody hell.

I think the problem was the same for most people; there's not a hope of Edge challenging for the NXT title so all he was doing was turning up to pay lip service. Hardly riveting stuff.