Wednesday Night Wars 02/19/2020 Ratings

It's good news for both WWE and AEW this week. NXT and Dynamite saw a drop in their ratings last week, but both shows are making a comeback. In the case of AEW, the rebound was more substantial, but that's to be expected since their prior week's drop in the audience was higher. (See graph above.) At this point, large fluctuations in Dynamite's audience size is almost becoming the norm. So it is getting hard to predict which show will come out ahead in the Wednesday Night Wars from week to week. With that having been said, AEW did put on a great episode of Dynamite this week, and their efforts were rewarded with another victory in the ratings.

Dynamite experienced a big 9.3 percent gain in its audience this week. It went up from 817,000 last week to 893,000 this week. It featured AEW's first ever steel cage match, and that was probably one of the factors that led to more viewers tuning in. The show also experienced a rise in its 18-49 demographic ratings. It went from 0.30 last week to 0.31 this week. The change was small, but I am sure AEW is happy to see any kind of comeback after the prior week's big drop.

NXT's gain in viewership was noteably less, but that's not surprising. Unlike Dynamite, changes in NXT's ratings do not fall into such a wide range. Its viewership went up from last week's 757,000 to this week's 794,000. That's a small bump of 1.7 percent. But again, the fact that the increase is relatively small is not a sign that the WWE is losing ground. In fact, this is the largest audience size for NXT in 2020. So if anything, the WWE show is gradually doing better and better. Similarly, the show set a 2020 record in its 18-49 demographic ratings this week. It went up from 0.24 to 0.25. The last time NXT had a 18-49 rating greater than 2.4 was all the way back in December 2019.

Dynamite's winning streak is now up to eight, but WWE's Super ShowDown is coming up this week. And as we have seen in the past, WWE always sees an audience bump right before pay per views. In addition, Raw's Charlotte Flair has been showing up on NXT recently, and inter-show appearances like this have often piqued fan's interests. So we'll see if NXT can finally get thier first win in 2020 next week. For now, Dynamite's win-loss record is 16-3-1 for viewers and 19-1 for the 18-49 demographics. NXT's record is 3-16-1 for viewers and 1-19 for the 18-49 demographics.