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Hello and welcome to another weekly article about the US TV ratings for wrestling shows.
Season Premier for the blue show, Dynamite celebrates its birthday while the NBA prepares its comeback and in the end... the NFL always wins.
RAW Ratings (3rd October) :
Ratings : 1 599 000 (-4,478 %) & 0.40 sur les 18-49 [-0.05]
Ratings per hour :
H1 : [P2+ : 1 701 000] [18-49 : 0.43] [Cable Pos :8]
H2 : [P2+ : 1 683 000] [18-49 : 0.43] [Cable Pos : 7]
H3 : [P2+ : 1 413 000] [18-49 : 0.35] [Cable Pos : 9]
The final RAW before Extreme Rules didn't do any magic against the NFL. The red show fell back below 1,600,000 viewers, losing 0.05 in the 18-49 demographic (the drop was mainly in the third hour of the show). It will be necessary to put out solid programs to regain the audience at this time of the year (although it resists more than the last 2 years). That's what Triple H will try to do on the next episode, which will celebrate the 25th anniversary of Degeneration-X. A special episode all under the "Season Premier" label in hopes of regaining ratings.
This week, RAW faced a great show (Los Angeles Rams vs. San Francisco 49ers), which once again dominated cable on ESPN with 12,496,000 viewers and a 3.90 rating in the 18-49 demographic on both ESPN and ESPN 2.
Ratings NXT 2.0 (4th October) :
Ratings : 625 000 (-5,30 %) & 0.13 sur les 18-49 [-0.03]
Cable Pos : 30th.
NXT loses ratings again and drops from 14th to 30th place against competition that was not fundamentally different from what they are used to. The winter programs are doing well and NXT is not able to stand out and is struggling to keep the positive momentum going, the fault of the winter programs. Halloween Havoc is coming up, it will have to be used to bounce back.
Some non-sporting competitors again this Tuesday with FBI on CBS (6 967 & 0.57), Bachelorette on ABC ( 2 148 000 & 0.54) and The Voice on NBC (6 471 000 & 0.70).
Ratings AEW Dynamite (5th October) :
Ratings : 1 038 000 (+4,85 %) & 0.33 sur les 18-49 [-0.01]
Cable Pos : 2nd.
Peak audience (18-49) → Q1: 1,179,000 (and about 0.37 on 18-49)
MJF vs Wheeler Yuta
Many thanks to Brandon Thurston for this quarterly data.
Dynamite is back on the cable podium this week (after last Wednesday when the Weather channels dominated cable due to Hurricane Ian) despite a slight loss in the 18-49 demo, with viewers mostly on nationals. A special episode as the show was celebrating Dynamite's 3rd birthday. A festive show where MJF also found the way to the ring. However, we can note that the audience did not stop decreasing throughout the episode in a constant way, starting at 1 179 000 (0.37) to finish at 879 000 (0.30).
Competition still marked by the series as the NBA is about to make its return in 2 weeks : Survivor on CBS (5,145,000 & 0.80), Chicaco Med on NBC (6,747,000 & 0.64) and Masked Singer on FOX (5,949,000 & 0.67).
Ratings Smackdown (7th October) :
Ratings : 2 243 000 (+1,63 %) & 0.54 sur les 18-49 [+/-0.00]
The episode had the makings of a great crowd pleaser; the last show before Extreme Rules as well as the "Season Premier" episode with the added bonus of Roman Reigns returning on this episode. We could have expected a bigger jump for this busy episode but it was not the case, despite the fact that this week's numbers are still good, the trend is always positive lately.
One lead to explain these numbers is on cable with Baseball on ESPN. MLB has been posting very positive numbers for the past year and Friday's game drew 3,609,000 viewers with a 0.99 in 18-49.
Far from the NFL numbers, but coupled with Shark Tank on ABC (3,437,000 & 0.47) as well as SWAT on CBS (4,763,000 & 0.73) these are some of the competitors that were able to grab some audience from the blue show.
Ratings AEW Rampage (7th October) :
Ratings : 404 000 (-14,41 %) & 0.13 sur les 18-49 [-0.03]
Cable Pos : 20th.
As you can imagine, if SmackDown didn't do much better with a loaded show, all the programs mentioned above did much more harm to Rampage which was close to the 400,000 spectator mark.
Faced with the last hour of the MLB game on ESPN (3,609,000 & 0.99) and the numerous series broadcast on the national networks, this Rampage was not attractive enough for a part of the audience to go elsewhere.
We then fall back on the same limitations of the Rampage program: a show in the second half of the evening, which is rarely broadcast live, makes the program not always very attractive. We know that Dynamite remains the flagship program that will guide the renegotiations of TV rights, it remains to be seen if Rampage will also be able to have some weight by finding how to get the best out of the product in this often difficult time slot.
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