Wednesday Night Wars 01/29/2020 Ratings

Ever since WWE decided to prominently feature the NXT brand on Survivor Series, NXT has seen notable gains in its ratings. And often times, whenever we saw a rise in NXT's numbers, we saw a correspnding drop in Dynamite's numbers. (See graph above.) This meant that the two brands were really fighting over at least a segment of the wrestling audience, and it really fealt like the Monday Night Wars again. However, althouugh Dynamite did come out ahead again, both show saw declines this week. The drops weren't dramatic, but they were definitely notable. So unless this was a fluke, it might suggest that both shows have lost that "fresh" factor and are following the declining trend of TV wrestling in general.

The number of Dynamite viewers fell from 871,000 last week to 828,000 this week. Although this was not huge, it was still a somewhat significant decline of 4.9 percent. Perhaps this was to be expected since this particular episode didn't feature any championship matches or a special venue like last week. However, it is still a bad sign for AEW, because this is the first consecutive week where its audience size has shrunk. In the 18-49 demographics department, Dynamite saw a slight decrease going from 0.35 to 0.34. This goes hand in hand with the 4.9 percent drop in audience size, so there were no surprises there.

Over on the NXT side, viewrship fell from last week's 769,000 to 712,000 this week. Compared to AEW, that is a slightly more significant drop of 7.4 percent. So as I previously surmised, perhaps NXT's strong numbers last week was indeed just due to anticipation of the WWE Royal Rumble pay-per-view that occurred this past weekend. And during that event, nothing occurred that particularly highlighted any NXT performers, so there was little reason for NXT fans to tune into this week's episode. Correspondingly, NXT's 1849 demographic rating fell from 0.24 last week to 0.22 this week. This drop put an end NXT's recent trend of gaining popularity in that demographic, and that is bad news for the brand.

As previously mentioned, AEW didn't feature any championship matches on this week's Dynamite. But despite that fact, it was still a strong show. I hate to say it. But at this point, I have become acclimated to AEW's fast-paced style of wrestling. Don't get me wrong. It is still amazing to watch the athleticism of the performers. However, it is no longer what stands out about the show. Instead, what caught my eye this week were the segments with Adam Page and Britt Baker. At one point during the show, Page came to the ring, asked one of the Young Bucks to hold his beer, delivered a Buckshot Lariat, retrieved his beer, and returned backstage, all within 2 minutes. Not only was this hiliariously enjoyable, but it briliantly highlighted the Hangman's new attitude. Likewise, Britt Baker's interview segment was very entertaining. Although Baker has been prominently featured on AEW since the beginning, I always found her character to be acceptable at best. There was just nothing special about her. But with her new heel persona on full display during her interview this week, she has suddenly become much more interesting. She not only criticized the current women's champion Riho, but she also criticized the comentary team using real-life elements like JR's barbeque sauce. (It almost sounded like it was a shoot.) So overall, it is great to see AEW improving the non-wrestling segments of their show to catch up with their outstanding in-ring action.

NXT put on a good show this week too, but it felt somewhat like a transitional show. A couple of new angles were introduced, but there wasn't any real character development or storyline progression. The exception to that, though, is the contract signing between Tommaso Ciampa and Adam Cole. Personally, I have always found contract signing segments to be silly, because they always follow the same formula. However, this particular one where Ciampa used his own blood to "sign" the contract was pretty original, and it made the impending match more interesting. As far as wrestling matches go, this week's NXT featured the finals of the Dusty Rhodes Tag Team Classic. Like all of the others matches this week, this tag team bout included great technical wrestling. The only drawback is that it was pretty obvious which team would emerge victorious. So it was difficult to be very excited about it.

At the end of the day, it is another victory for AEW. But again, the story this week is that both shows' ratings fell. It almost seems like the two shows are losing traction which is bad news for all wrestling fans. Hopefully, this was just a fluke, and the numbers for both shows will improve next week. As it stands, the viewership win-loss record for Dynamite is 13-3-1 and that for NXT is 3-13-1. For the 18-49 demographic rating, the record is 16-1 for Dynamite and 1-16 for NXT.