In October 2019, AEW Dynamite began airing on TNT. WWE NXT secured a time slot on cable television for the first time and had a two-week head start on the upstart promotion, airing head-to-head on the same night. From that point on until April 7, 2021, the shows both aired on Wednesday nights from 8-10 p.m. Eastern with a few exceptions. Over that time frame which was a total of 82 weeks, NXT beat Dynamite in the 18-49 demographic exactly once while occasionally beating the show in overall viewers.
Since moving to Tuesday night and bottoming out with the NXT 2.0 format which featured younger, and very inexperienced wrestlers, NXT has managed to stabilize and eventually grow both its overall audience and 18-49 rating.
On October 2022, Dynamite moved to Tuesday night due to TBS coverage (the show moved to TBS in January 2022) of opening week of the NHL season. On that day, October 18th, Dynamite averaged 752,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating in the 18-49 demo running head-to-head with NXT. That was down from the 1,025,800 and 0.34 that the show had been averaging for the 10 weeks prior on it's regular night. Those are declines of 26% in overall viewers and 23.5% in 18-49.
Both numbers handily beat NXT which averaged 676,000 and 0.18 airing head-to-head. The overall viewership was similar to the 10 week average of 679,600 while the 18-49 rating was actually up 20% from the 0.15 the show had been averaging.
Last year, the second edition of the Tuesday Night War saw NXT load up with main roster stars. The biggest of which were John Cena, The Undertaker and Cody Rhodes. NXT won in both overall viewership and 18-49 rating with 921,000 and a 0.30 for the October 10th show. Those numbers were up from the 734,700 and 0.21 that the show had been averaging.
AEW Dynamite, which also loaded up with several title matches for a show called Title Tuesday, averaged 609,000 viewers and a 0.26 rating. That was down from the 848,400 and 0.30 the show had been averaging for the 10 weeks prior. The declines were 28.2% and 13.3% in 18-48. So the overall viewership decline was similar to the previous year and the 18-49 actually held up far better with a well promoted show with big title matches.
Which leads us to this week when the shows only went head-to-head for one hour with Dynamite starting an hour later.
WWE NXT on CW: 874,000 viewers; 0.24 P18-49 rating
— Wrestlenomics (@wrestlenomics) October 9, 2024
AEW Dynamite preempted on TBS: 329,000; 0.10https://t.co/SQPbnVzaiG
NXT averaged 874,000 viewers and a 0.24 rating in the 18-49 demo. That's up from the 677,400 and 0.21 rating the show has averaged the last 10 weeks, most of which were on their previous home of the USA Network. They also had main roster stars Jade Cargill, Bianca Belair, A-Town Down Under, Jey Uso and Randy Orton on the show. Uso's appearance was brief and unadvertised. Not nearly the starpower as last year but they clearly made an effort. They also had two title matches that had been built for weeks and the first Randy Orton match in NXT in over 12 years.
AEW Dynamite's latest edition of Title Tuesday had exactly one title match that was announced Saturday night on Collision with no previous build featuring Mercedes Mone defending both her NJPW Strong title and TBS title against Emi Sakura, who had not won a match in AEW in over 18 months. The main event was announced on the previous week's Dynamite and featured AEW World champion Bryan Danielson teaming with Wheeler Yuta to face Yuta's partners and two-thirds of the AEW Trios champions Claudio Castagnoli and PAC. The other matches were an unannounced Jay White match against local enhancement talent Cody Chhun, a four-way number one contender's match announced earlier that afternoon on X and a Hologram vs Komander match that had been announced the previous afternoon on X.
The show averaged 329,000 viewers and a 0.10 rating in 18-49, both record lows for the show. This compares to 10-week averages of 677,400 and 0.21 which means declines of 51.4% in overall viewers and 52.4% in 18-49 from the 10-week averages. Both declines are much more severe than the show had done in previous years when they moved the show to Tuesday.
This is not a result of going head-to-head with NXT or the loaded star power that show had as the same applied in each of the two previous years and was far more prevalent last year. This is more than likely the result of a poorly promoted card and failure to properly promote the move to Tuesday with a new start time for Dynamite this week. Last year, Title Tuesday was promoted for several weeks and had two title matches and a number one contender's match between Bryan Danielson and Swerve Strickland on the show with a main event featuring the first AEW match of recent signee Adam Copeland.
To recap:
- In 2022, AEW Dynamite beat NXT in both overall viewership and 18-49 demo rating.
- In 2023, Dynamite's overall viewership was 66% of NXT's while the 18-49 rating was 87%.
- This year, the overall viewership was 38% of NXT's while the 18-49 rating was 42%.
