Wednesday Night Wars 04/08/2020 Ratings

Thanks to the COVID-19 situation, the ratings for both shows continue to be relatively low as the novelty of empty arena wrestling shows have definitely worn off. Despite that, however, both shows did see increases in the ratings. While Dynamite's was minimal, NXT's ratings bump was significant thanks to a jam packed card and possibly Charlotte Flair winning the NXT Women's Championship this past weekend. How significant? It was significant enough for the WWE show to score its first ratings victory in 2020. (See graph above.)

Some people were disappointed with last week's NXT because it barely included any matches that was originally scheduled for the NXT Takeover event that was supposed to have occurred this past weekend. Well, this week's show made up for it. The show included two long awaited matches, Johnny Gargano versus Tommaso Ciampa and Blackheart versus Rebel Heart: One Final Beat. Plus, there was an outstanding ladder to determine the number one contender for the NXT women's title. So despite the empty arena, NXT was able to increase its audience a very healthy 17.5 percent going from last week's 590,000 viewers to this week's 693,000 viewers. As expected, NXT's 18-49 demographics rating also went up going from last week's 0.15 to 0.19 this week.

Over on the TNT network, the highlight of Dynamite was the commentary team of Tony Schiavone and Chris Jericho. It's hard to picture the star of the show being the commentators, but the duo had great chemistry that made the show fly by. In addition, AEW once again showed off their creative side with a comedic match between Best Friends and Kenny Omega/Michael Nakazawa, and the main event of the evening was the match up between Cody Rhodes and Shawn Spears in the tournament for the new TNT Title. This did give Dynamite a bump in the ratings, but it was only by 1%. The audience grew from 685,000 last week to 692,000 this week. The show's 18-49 demigraphic rating also grew slightly, increasing from 0.25 to 0.26.

As mentioned, NXT did beat Dynamite in the ratings this week, but it only pertains to the audience size. In terms of the 18-49 demographics, Dynamite still came out on top by a substantial margin with its 0.26 over NXT's 0.19. This shows what has been the case since the very beginning of the Wednesday Night Wars. The core of the WWE audience are older loyalists who probably grew up watching WWE. On the other hand, AEW's audience seems to be made up of a younger segment who are more prone to switching stations if their attention is not kept. And unfortunately for AEW, these empty arena shows are definitely contributing to that.

So for the first time since December 2019, NXT was able to garner more viewers than Dynamite in this week's edition of the Wednesday Night Wars. In the eyes of sponsors, though, Dynamite was still a better product with its continued dominance in the 18-49 demographics. Still, a win is a win, and the win-loss record for NXT is now 4-22-1 for viewership and 1-26 for the 18-49 demographics. For Dynamite, it is now 22-4-1 for viewership and 26-1 for the 18-49 demographics.