Wednesday Night Wars 11/27/2019 Ratings

Due to Thanksgiving weekend, the ratings for last week's Dynamite and NXT were delayed. Now that they are finally in, we may be witnessing the tide turning for NXT. Yup. For the second week in a row, WWE's NXT garnered more viewers than AEW's Dynamite. And this time, it was by a significant margin. Dynamite still scored a higher rating among the 18-49 demographic, though.

As you can see from the chart above, both shows' numbers slid this past week. It is just a matter of which show slid more. NXT's viewership went down from 916,000 to 810,000, a drop of 11.6%. While that's a significant drop, it was Dynamite that really took a tumble. Its viewership went down from 893,000 to 663,000. That's a whopping 25.8%. Dynamite's rating among the 19-49 demographic also took a huge hit. It fell from 0.39 all the way down to 0.26. However, that's still slightly higher than that of NXT's. NXT's rating was 0.30 the week before, and it dropped to 0.24 this past week. So the two show's coveted 18-49 demographic ratings are now neck and neck.

Dynamite advertised a championship match between Chris Jericho and Scorpio Sky. A heavyweight championship match doesn't often occur on TV, so I expected that to draw some attention. Yet once again, I was proven wrong. Maybe it was due to the holiday weekend, but people just didn't seem interested enough to tune in. There was nothing wrong with the episode. The aforementioned championship match was good, and the show featured fan-favorites like Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega, and Jon Moxley. But despite all that, they lost a huge chunk of their audience. This is a very bad sign for AEW. Could the bloom be off the rose already? It isn't too surpising that Dynamite's numbers fell. However, to fall this much from the previous week is a huge momentum killer. Just for comparison, Dynamite's premiere episode had 1,409,000 viewers. That means to date, Dynamite has lost a total of 53% of its initial audience. Does this mean AEW is just a fad?

On the WWE's side, it looks like Vince McMahon's strategy of having NXT win Survivor Series didn't really work. After all, their numbers still went down compared to the previous week's. Then again, maybe the strategy did work, and the numbers would have been even worse if NXT lost Survivor Series. Who knows. Regardless of whether NXT won or lost, the show probably did get a small bump as people tuned in just to see if there would be any fall out from Survivor Series. Unfortunately for those folks, with the exception of a brief celebration at the start of the show, there was no real mention of Survivor Series. No Smackdown or Raw superstars were present, and no new storylines were introduced from the event (e.g., Seth Rollin's heel turn on Raw). This doesn't mean that it was a bad episode, though. It was just back to the usual pre-Survivor Series NXT.

For me, the question for next week's edition of the Wednesday Night Wars is not which show will get more viewers. Instead, I think it is more important to see where Dynammite's number go from here. Was last week a fluke? Or are we seeing a pattern? Because if things continue to head in the direction they are going, AEW can be in real trouble. For NXT, it doesn't matter too much if their numbers fall. Worst case scenario is that it goes back to the WWE Network. But if Dynamite fails, that could put AEW as a whole in jeopardy.