Wednesday Night Wars 04/01/2020 Ratings

This is the third week where AEW and WWE have had to hold empty arena shows. Although the idea was novel at first, everybody noticed that the lack of a live crowd definitely diminished the viewing experience. And for the most part, fans knew that it would only be a matter of time before we would begin to tune out. Well, it looks like that time is now. The negative impact of an empty arena has become evident in the form of poor ratings for both Dynamite and NXT this week.

As can be seen in the chart above, all four major wrestling shows on TV (i.e., Raw, Smackdown, Dynamite, and NXT) saw a steep decline in their ratings for their latest episodes. Dynamite itself lost over 130,000 viewers. But luckily for AEW, NXT also saw a big drop in their audience. So Dynamite was able to get another victory in the Wednesday Night Wars.

Like with the previous two weeks, Dynamite did its creative best to make viewers overlook the fact that the show is missing that special energy which comes with a live crowd. For example, wrestlers were placed around the ring to make up a tiny but lively audience. Also, there was a hilarious segment featuring Chris Jericho trying to once again recruit Vanguard 1 into the Inner Circle. And of course, the show included great wrestling action as usual. Even its women's match (which is usually AEW's weakness) between Hikaru Shida and independent wrestler Anna Jayy was a great match up. Despite all its efforts, though, AEW couldn't keep its ratings up. The audience size for this week's Dynamite fell to 685,000 from last week's 819,000. That's a big decrease of 16.4 percent. Similarly, the show saw a huge drop in its 18-49 demographics rating. It fell from 0.34 all the way down to 0.25.

Over on NXT, with the NXT Takeover show that was orignally scheduled for Saturday cancelled (which is definitely understandable given the current circumstances), it is unclear how the ongoing storylines will play out. Unfortunately, not much was resolved on this week's episode. However, the show did feature a great women's gauntlet match as well as a North American Championship match between Keith Lee, Dominik Dijakovic, and Damian Priest. But like with Dynamite, these weren't enough to overcome the negative impact of an empty arena. Although NXT's ratings didn't fall as sharply as Dynamite's, they still took a big hit. Its audience fell from 669,000 last week to 590,000 this week. That's a decrease of 11.8 percent. As for NXT's 18-49 demographics rating, it fell from 0.20 to 0.15.

It is hard to imagine that next week's numbers will be any better for Dynamite or NXT. But then again, this is Wrestlemania weekend. So maybe NXT will get a bump depending on what happens with the Charlotte Flair versus Rhea Ripley match this weekend. With the current situation, tbough, it's hard to predict anything. For all we know, there might not even be regular episodes of the two shows next week. We'll just have to wait and see. For now, Dynamite's win-loss record becomes 22-3-1 for viewership and 25-1 for the 18-49 demographics rating. For NXT, it is 3-22-1 for viewership and 1-25 for the 18-49 demographics rating.