Wednesday Night Wars 03/04/2020 Ratings

Relatively speaking, both NXT and Dynamite are pretty new shows. NXT's first episode was back in September 2019 while Dynamite's was in October 2019. So in regular television terms, this is really both shows' first seasons. As such, the ratings for the two shows were bound to fluctuate as the audience gets to know them. At this point, though, NXT's ratings have been relatively stable for the past couple of months now, and it looks like Dynamite's has reached that same stage. We are now clearly seeing a pattern in the ratings, and this week was no exception as the AEW show was able to get another victory. (See graph above.)

Dynamite's audience went up by 4.7 percent this week. It rose from last week's 865,000 to 906,000 this week. In the 18-49 demographic ratings, the show received a nice bump going up from 0.30 to 0.35. It makes sense that the show's ratings went up since this was the fall out episode after AEW's Revolution pay per view last weekend. Also, the show had a nice surprise in the form of WWE Hall of Famer Jake the Snake Roberts. Although the master of the DDT has been out of the limelight for a while now, he still got a massive reaction from the audience which shows that he can still be an asset.

On the WWE side, NXT's audience did technically increase. But for all intents and purposes, it was the same as last week's. It went up from 717,000 last week to 718,000 this week. This was a negligible change of 0.1 percent. In the 18-49 demographics department, the rating also remained the same at 0.23. WWE tried to put its best foot forward by featuring two cage matches this week, but this apparently didn't make much of an impact in the ratings.

It is interesting to note that despite the audience size for NXT remaining the same, Dynamite garnered a decent increase in its number of viewers. This suggests that AEW didn't get those additional viewers from the WWE. Instead, they were able to attract new viewers to Wednesday night wrestling. This is extremely important because that has been AEW's supposedly strategy all along. Their intent is NOT to compete head-to-head with the WWE. Rather, they want to attract back previous wrestling fans who have been disillusioned by WWE in recent years. And according to this week's numbers, they are succeeding in their mission.

At the beginning of the Wednesday Night Wars, the WWE made a public statement that "this is a marathon, not a one-night sprint" after its initial loss in the ratings. And to their credit, they were right. After Dynamite's huge ratings for their first episode, the show's viewership did drop significantly. In fact, NXT actually overtook Dynamite in the ratings at the end of 2019. However, since then, both shows' ratings have begun to level out. We no longer see huge jumps or drops in the ratings, and we are beginning to see a clear pattern. (Again, see graph above.) And according to this pattern, it is clear that AEW is the consistent winner in the Wednesday Night Wars. Of course, as previously stated, both shows are still relatively young. Therefore, things can still dramatically change. But for now, AEW has been undefeated in 2020, so WWE better think of a new strategy if they want to stop AEW from gaining further traction.

This week's AEW victory in the ratings would be the company's 10th straight win in a row. This makes Dynamite's win-loss record 18-3-1 for viewership and 21-1 for the 18-49 demograhics. In turn, this makes NXT's record 3-18-1 for viewership and 1-21 for the 18-49 demographics. These records are now getting more and more lopsided. So unless WWE can do something to change this pattern, AEW may indeed become the winner of this "marathon".