.png)
Hello and welcome back to (probably) the most comprehensive coverage of all the major US TV Wrestling ratings anywhere online! This was a return to normality for wrestling TV, with all four shows airing on their actual nights so yes, the Wednesday Night War is back!
AEW were down from last week, but with NXT coming back to Wednesdays they always would be, but despite that they had a great night. They came 3rd for the night in P18-49 and #1 in M18-49, P18-34, and M12-34. These are great numbers with direct wrestling competition. Their P18-49 number was down 8.1% (0.37 to 0.34) and their P2+ was down 12.8% (1,016,000 to 886,000). The 1 million number seems unattainable for a while yet, but if you're finishing in the Top 5 then there isn't much to worry about. AEW's biggest drop came in the P50+ audience, NXT's specialty, dropping from a 0.4 to a 0.32 (20%). Overall this was a very strong week, and a good sign for the future on contested Wednesday nights.
NXT returned to Wednesday nights, and after 4 weeks of good ratings while uncontested, they had a bit of a shocker this week. Their P2+ number dropped 17.8% (838,000 to 689,000) and their P18-49 dropped a similar amount, 18.2% overall (0.22 to 0.18), good for a 31st place finish for the night. To me this just shows that NXT moving to another day in the week is just best for them. The AEW war is a write-off and keeping it going is just detrimental to all of wrestling. Though if they can keep 149k viewers from AEW they're never going to move.
Raw was roughly level this week, but given that it was the return of Monday Night Football, this was a lot better than expected. They dropped 2.1% in P2+ (1,725,000 to 1,689,000) but were actually up 7% in P18-49 (0.48 to 0.51). This was a very stacked show however, with a steel cage match and a women's title match, it remains to be seen if they can keep these numbers up throughout the whole football season.
Smackdown had a very good week, they were up 12% in P2+ (2,065,000 to 2,329,000) and 9.1% in P18-49 (0.55 to 0.6). Given that there was nothing particularly special on the show, with the possible exception of an AJ Styles vs Jeff Hardy IC title match, this is a really promising sign. The Roman Reigns push seems to be at least partly catching on and if they keep up numbers like this then they should be very happy
As always I'm available @WhyIsChester on Twitter for any questions and if you enjoy the coverage here, please share the article and check out all the other great content on Pro Wrestling Musings,
Comments