NXT needs to go in for the kill now and announce some crossbrand matches for their show next week.
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AEW Dynamite |OT| Wednesday Nitro - Live on TNT, Wed. @ 8 ET
- Thread starter Bronx-Man
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It's been a month. Calm down. Cultivating and sustaining a religious audience is a marathon, not a sprint. The fact they exceeded expectations out of the gate absolutely matters, and all indications are that TNT is happy as shit. They have a non-NBA program in the top 10 that can bring eyeballs to their network year round.
The expectations are entirely relevant. As long as they are meeting TNT's expectations, the show is viable and will continue. They shouldn't be looked down on because they vastly overshoot reasonable expectations with their first week.
It exceeding expectations is relevant when it comes to staying on air. It isn't relevant in terms of justifying losing almost half its initial audience. If you're running a show, and you lose almost half your viewers over the course of a month, and you AREN'T concerned and wondering if tweaks need to be made, then that product isn't likely to see the success possible.
Again, nobody is talking about worrying about cancellation.
It can very easily climb back up again. Lets not forget that AEW is basically in it's infancy. The company and the show has a long way to go. They will gain fans as more people learn about it and continue to come back each week and as they sign popular wrestlers when their WWE contracts are up. If they can add guys like Scurll and The Revival, that's no joke. But the latter won't be available for another... six months or so. It's the long haul. Unless the ratings tank and they're around 500k or 600k sometime soon, I'm not going to worry much.
Of course NXT was going to get a big boost this week and probably until after Survivor Series. It would have been pathetic if they didn't. We'll see how things shake out heading into 2020.
Remember, if SEW
AEW and WWE the masters of audience disappearance trick.
Sadly at this point, dropping to 600k is no longer a tank. At the show's current trajectory, that could happen in a week or two. lol
I am curious to see if NXT can hang after Survivor series.
Then again you have Rumble and Mania coming up so we shall see how that pans out.
I don't know what this means for Takeover if NXT stars will now be on main PPVs.
Eh...I mean one of their big problems is that in order to watch Dynamite in the U.S., you need either a cable subscription or some sort cable streaming package, the cheapest of which that has DVR capability is $30 for SlingTV. I cut the cord years ago, and I'm not signing up for cable. I've considered signing up for Sling TV, but you can find Dynamite pretty much in its entirety on Youtube not long after it airs, or at the very least, the individual matches. If AEW had a NJPW World type streaming service in the U.S. or a WWE Network streaming service in U.S. I could sign up for without needing a VPN, I'd do so in a heartbeat. I can't really justify paying $30/per month for one basic cable channel that I'll only watch one show on. I think a better indicator will be how their PPV numbers are maybe.
I don't know, as I love product. If I had to take a guess, I'd say it needs more large wrestlers with a presence. I don't think the casual viewer is into these guys that look like they were found working at a gas station before the show started - or that look like they've never seen the inside of a gym.
Orange Cassidy is a perfect example of what I think doesn't resonate with casual viewers. We think it's funny because we get it - the casual viewer is going to see him in action and be like, wtf is this shit? lol
If AEW was on Hulu I would see it. Not Live Hulu but 5.99 day after Hulu.
So right now I watch NXT on Hulu day after, AEW Dark on You Tube, and Smackdown free over the air. That for me is the cheapest way to consume those two.
This makes the assumption that people weren't just interested as a one-off. Even well-executed wrestling is still wrestling. Maybe some people watched, realized the entire vibe wasn't for them, and checked out. I think they can execute better (this last week was better than any episode they've done previously), but ultimately if you change too much you risk the fanbase you do have tuning out.
Don't just assume you have people like me 'cause "I'm a core fan". If you try to get too old school just to get the 50+ audience up I'll dip, and others will too.
I don't think they need to change much. The only change I feel they need is more large wrestlers that will appeal to casual viewers. Wrestlers like Omega need to be on the small end of the scale, not the large end.
Wrestlers like Darby, while we may think he's great, the casual viewer is going to see a scrawny emo kid who is randomly wearing daisy dukes. Or Riho that looks like an 8 year old.
Other than Omega and Jericho (because both are established), I don't see many on the roster that the average TV viewer is going to watch and see a "superstar". Much of the roster looks like random dudes who have never worked out.
#wardlow....kidding. I think there's some truth to this, but I also think what makes AEW great is how different it is from WWE, the land of giants. I think if they had a mix of big guys and small guys, like a proper cruiserweight division, it'd be great.
Had my gf sit down and watch with me last night. It was her first time ever watching wrestling, though she had heard about AEW starting up. As a side note, I believe that initial hype is what drove such a high debut. Lots of people tuned in out of curiosity. Unfortunately, most were probably like my gf and have no real interest in wrestling and were never going to stick around.
Anyway, from her casual point of view, the two things she enjoyed the most were the comedy and the longer sequences of moves in some of the matches. She has zero interest in two half naked men fighting, but liked it when it appeared that a long sequence of moves or spots were well connected as it made her feel like she was watching a well choreographed play. Her favourites were OC, Jericho and Omega. She loved the brawl at the end and was impressed with the women since she had no idea women wrestled lol.
Anyway, from her casual point of view, the two things she enjoyed the most were the comedy and the longer sequences of moves in some of the matches. She has zero interest in two half naked men fighting, but liked it when it appeared that a long sequence of moves or spots were well connected as it made her feel like she was watching a well choreographed play. Her favourites were OC, Jericho and Omega. She loved the brawl at the end and was impressed with the women since she had no idea women wrestled lol.
There aren't that many of those guys around nowadays, even the larger wrestlers are doing flips and shit to gain higher star ratings.
Two things I wonder if it has hurt AEW is how they initially portrayed Kenny Omega in the first few weeks and a lack of continuity of people appearing on TV every week.
One of their own guys with arguably the biggest buzz about him for people curious about the promotion and they start off with him being cold the first few weeks is certainly a questionable decision.
I haven't followed the segment by segment ratings but AEW has built new guys up like Darby and Riho and PP but then suddenly they're gone for weeks.
Hell maybe the people leaving every week and not coming back are people that aren't into Orange Cassidy's antics.
If this is the change that needs to happen, then wrestling deserves to fail. I'm....like half joking.
I just saw the ratings for both shows. It looks like AEW directly lost viewers to NXT. That's really good for WWE. Combined 1.6 million viewers aren't far off from an Raw show. I think that's roughly the amount of people who watch wrestling at an whole. I don't think there's any way to increase this number much.
I love how every crowd has been selling the shit out of OC's vicious hits.
It looks like so much fun. Hope I get to be part of this live one of these days.
I don't think that's accurate at all. SD on Fox got what, 2.6? Regardless 1.6 isn't even close to the amount who watch wrestling as a whole.
I honestly think AEW needs bigger stars if they want to go back to getting near that 1.4 rating. The one thing I will criticize AEW on is that we're not given a chance to know anything about the wrestlers outside of the big names like Mox, Omega, Jericho, Bucks, Lucha Bros, Pac, Hangman, Cody, and the fact that Britt is a dentist. Where are the promos for the other women wrestlers besides Britt Baker? What about promos for some of the tag teams? The wrestling is great, but great wrestling isn't going to get you very far if the crowd doesn't know or care about them.
But after SS, I fully expect NXT numbers to go right back down to around 600k.
But after SS, I fully expect NXT numbers to go right back down to around 600k.
Fox has an bigger reach than any cable network. 1.6 million Give or take is probably the max for wrestling on an Wednesday night. Looking at the trends from the last three weeks gives credence.
Isn't Cody going on inside the NBA tonight to hype up Full Gear?
But that's all that really matters. It's been a really fun show to watch. They're doing more than good enough to continue on and grow from here. As a fan, that's all I care about. I couldn't care less who chooses to watch WWE.
This is too much focus on the 1.4 million. Ok, they popped a giant first week rating that they haven't come close to matching. But they've maintained a solid audience in the ~750,000-1,000,000 range that has beaten NXT every week. They're doing great! If when AEW was announced, and you were told they drew 800,000 viewers and beat NXT, would people have believed that, let alone been disappointed by it? I just don't get being on the ledge over this.
The absolute wrong takeaway from all of this is they need to change course from what they are doing. The show has been a big success by any metric so far!
It's "Le Champion" Chris Jericho. I wonder how it will go so I'm watching. Since people are complaining about not enough big men on tv, they should get Shaq lol.
Also for a company thats only about to be 1 year in, they have probably destroyed earlier numbers in regards to fans. It took every other company years to get more of a base and I wouldn't be surprised if it took a couple of years to get bigger. They have to fight off the stigma that WWE put on professional wrestling as a whole these last 20 years.
I don't really understand it in 2019. Don't follow WWE but can see it's part of the culture of the fandom, just doesn't seem as relevant as it may have been 10, 20 years ago. I've been streaming AEW shows exclusively from the TNT app and I'm sure plenty of others do as well.
Folks have to realize the audience for 3rd tier shows isn't as big as it once was. Raw and Smackdown are weekly institutions where the people still watching tune in mostly out of habit and nostalgia. The collapse after the Monday Night Wars was gargantuan, and has only been sliding every year since then, with the WWE driving people away even more in recent years before the Heyman "shakeup" stabilized it a bit this year. AEW is fighting that uphill battle. They have to establish themselves over dozens of big shows, building stars and proving they can reach the boiling point in feuds consistently. That big first rating was because of a ridiculous groundswell over the last 8 months combined with WWE really cratering in interest. It was a freak occurrence where everything aligned. Does that mean they'll never hit those numbers again? No. Does that mean anyone should obsess over the fact that a new 4th 2-hour wrestling program lost part of its audience since then? Also no. The business is in a weird place right now. Give it time.
Well, and WWE too. I mean, look at what's happening with NXT. Using an NXT invasion to the main roster, and having main roster appear on NXT, is their panic button. They pushed it after a month, popped their rating, and still didn't beat AEW. Should they be celebrating right now? This is their typical short term buzz move that isn't sustainable and has diminishing returns.
The week-to-week changes have not been very big and there's no longer a downtrend. I surely hope they aren't micro-analyzing these and changing their booking plans because of them.
No longer a downtrend? Until there is a single bounce, there has been nothing but declines. That is the very definition of a downtrend. lol
edit: I was wrong, the ratings went up slightly this week. Still there there needs to be more than one week of increase to longer be a downtrend.
What were they last week?
edit: you're right, they did go up. My bad.
789,000 -> 822,000 (0.33 to 0.35 in the key demo)
The 1.4 million was clearly an outlier. Their viewership range has been within a less than 250,000 range since then. If this is where they're settling, it's really solid.
The 1.4 million was clearly an outlier. Their viewership range has been within a less than 250,000 range since then. If this is where they're settling, it's really solid.
I honestly think AEW needs to stay the course here. Like others have said, focusing on that one initial huge number is the wrong way to go about this considering how the stars aligned for that.
I'm absolutely down with AEW responding to things, and I think they've done that well so far with smaller tweaks and shifts. What I don't want are huge changes to something that ultimately doesn't need them. Honestly, as long as they're happy with the numbers and they're good enough to make this worth doing, I'm down.
Honestly, I'm still stunned by the fact that it has been beating NXT in the ratings every week. Not from a product quality perspective, but from a "WWE fans just kind of watch WWE shit out of habit," so I assumed they'd be eating AEW alive. That that's not the case is fucking awesome.
I'm absolutely down with AEW responding to things, and I think they've done that well so far with smaller tweaks and shifts. What I don't want are huge changes to something that ultimately doesn't need them. Honestly, as long as they're happy with the numbers and they're good enough to make this worth doing, I'm down.
Honestly, I'm still stunned by the fact that it has been beating NXT in the ratings every week. Not from a product quality perspective, but from a "WWE fans just kind of watch WWE shit out of habit," so I assumed they'd be eating AEW alive. That that's not the case is fucking awesome.
This is a more than fair point.
I would also go back to what DrewFu said in one of his posts RE: Larger wrestlers.
Maybe larger wrestlers is the wrong way to phrase it, I think more appropriate would be that AEW could absolutely use more in-ring variety.
Let's be fair.....if you're not into your flippy guys and the indie style of wrestling then you're not going to enjoy most of what the AEW roster offers.
I totally agree and the last thing they should do at the moment is change their show. They're on a roll.
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