Wednesday Night Wars 03/25/2020 Ratings

Last week, NXT aired a show consisting of video packages with no actual wrestling matches. Under the current circumstances of the pandemic, I am sure WWE had a reason for doing this. However, that episode ended up drawing the lowest ratings for NXT since moving to the USA network. At the same time, AEW had the debuts of Matt Hardy and Brody Lee (aka Luke Harper) on last week's episode of Dynamite. As a result, Dynamite saw a huge boost in the ratings while NXT's ratings plummetted. This week, though, things somewhat returned to normal with wrestling on both shows (although they were both empty arena shows), and neither show had any major reveals. So unsuprisingly, the ratings more so returned back to their normal pattern. Unfortunately for the WWE, this means that AEW was able to score yet another victory.

AEW had announced some interesting matches for this week's episode. This included a lumberjack match between Jake Hagar and Lucharsaurus along with a street fight between Best Friends and the Lucha Brothers. Both matches were scrapped, though, with no on-air explanation or even mention of the matches. So it is unknown whether they are being postponed or have been cancelled altogether. It was disappointted given what a great show AEW put on the previous week. But given the circumstances, any sudden changes are of course understandable, and it is obvious that AEW did their creative best to still put on an entertaining show. Yet, their efforts weren't strong enough to maintain last week's strong showing in the ratings. Dynamite's audience fell from 932,000 last week to 819,000 this week. That's a drop of 12.1 percent. In the 18-49 demographics rating, the number only dropped slightly falling from 0.35 to 0.34. So overall, the decrease in ratings was not very substantial.

As previously mentioned, NXT went back to its usual format this week with actual wrestling matches. The matches featured on the show weren't especially engrossing or pivotal to any storylines, but the WWE can't be blamed for this. The local government had instituted a mandate that would essentially shut down any further television production, so WWE had to rush to film as many hours of programming as possible (including Wrestlmania 36). Given the fact that the WWE airs seven hours of programming per week between Raw, Smackdown, and NXT, filming enough footage for the next few weeks is no easy feat. So any shortcomings in the quality of their matches or storylines is definitely excusable. Still, the matches on this week's NXT were good enough to bring the show's ratings back up significantly. The number of viewers increased from last week's 542,000 to this week's 669,000. That's a huge improvement of 23.4 percent. Similarly, there was a nice boost in the show's 18-49 demographics rating. It went up from 0.16 to 0.20. So for the most part, NXT was able to make up all the ground that it lost last week.

Neither WWE or AEW put on their best shows this week. But again, with the global health crisis, this is definitely understandable. Not only do the companies have to worry about keeping their performers safe (wrestling is a contact "sport" after all), but there is only so much that can be done with strict government limits in place. AEW is obviously trying to take creative measures such as simulcasting members of their roster from another room, but that can only go so far. So until the pandemic subsides, we can't expect too much. Hopefully, the ratings for the two shows will continue to hold relatively steady in the next few weeks. As for this week's ratings, the latest numbers makes Dynamite's win-loss record 21-3-1 for viewership and 24-1 for the 18-49 demograhics rating. Inversely, this makes NXT's win-loss record 3-21-1 for viewership and 1-24 for the 18-49 demographics.