Not really since just like AEW and the Tyson showdown, all it ended up being was just a cheap ratings pop since both shows have been going down since then. Plus that episode also

The real turn around was NXT finally getting a crowd for their shows to liven things up.

According to the Observer, seems NASCAR was the main reason for both shows drop this week since it ate big into their key demo and young viewership. The numbers would have been even worse had older viewers not gone up for both shows.

A+ for the smarks.

Casual fans don't care and won't care about a product like AEW or NXT. They've already hit their ceiling.

Yeah, I don't know why people expect AEW to magically hit 1 million viewers again. It's done.

It MAY hit 1 million, but it's not getting back to 1.4 million like their debut.

In February 2015, TNA Impact drew 691,000 fans on DESTINATION AMERICA!

How low would you say the perception of wrestling is at the minute? All time low?

I would say so

2.016 million for SD

http://www.showbuzzdaily.com/wp-cont...Jun-12-FRI.png

Here's how the big 4 did this week:

SD - 2.016 million
RAW - 1.737 million
AEW - 677k
NXT - 673k

Maybe for a freak occurrence. It's an arbitrary number anyway. I'm just sick of people telling me that they're "building momentum" and it's going to get really popular soon. Wtf? No.

That would be ridiculous even if the product was good, but it is very clearly the most cannibalistic wrestling product of all-time. One of their most pushed acts mocks the genre he's in. It's post-ironic wrestling, and that's only going to appeal to a certain subsection of wrestling fans, of which there are fewer and fewer being serviced.

Outside of 1 week when it went over 2.1 million, SD pretty much has settled into a 1.9 million to 2.0 million range these past 2 months.

They got the demo win this week but still can't get a win in viewership even with the other networks throwing softballs again with airing repeats of shows.

SmackDown holds up better than AEW in both terms of retaining their viewership and demo.

SD being on a stronger network and a weaker day in general in terms of stiff competition helps a lot.

When the show used to be on Fridays during the Taped Era and on a weaker network, their numbers held up similar in terms of being able to retain it better and not suffer from the same spikes both RAW and AEW have been getting.

The first episode of the Prichard era of Raw increased by 202,000 live viewers from the previous week.


Avg - 1.939 million
(credit - showbuzzdaily)


https://i.postimg.cc/658NqKV1/Screen...3-08-53-PM.png

Haha, wow. Look, beginner’s luck is a thing, they were coming off a PPV and there is even morbid curiosity, but Prichard might just be the right guy for that company. 200k viewers is over a quarter of the AEW audience though. Bruce is having a good week.

Best number since RAW After Mania even if it still was a sub-2 million number in the end.

Seems that big increase was almost all from the 50+ group since it spiked a lot this week. Took a sizeable hit with younger viewers but that old people gain was huge enough to both absorb it and cause the viewership to rise by a lot.

You are correct Smeat, I just saw a John Pollock tweet about the increase being entirely from 50+, the 18-49 demo stayed the same and Meltzer said the teen demo, especially male teens, plummeted to as low as ever.

If the reason was due to younger fans preferring more ring action than storytelling, then last night's show was not a good one for them. 1st two hours featured just 12-13 minutes of that.

Even in terms of the big hype generators for last night's show, it pretty much leaned on the older side with the fallout from the "Greatest Wrestling Match Ever", Christian's appearance being leaked, and curiosity of a Prichard-run RAW show. Nothing really that enticing from the younger side of the company.

Basic cable is not the best way to reach that audience in 2020. Meltzer, who takes ratings way too literally has not adapted to that. It's possible that cable network executives still take key demos seriously, because it's their business and they want their archaic medium to be as "cool" as possible, but everyone has to know. "Cable" over here has basically switched to an OTT service, at least provided as an on-demand alternative.

Meltzer is just looking for a way to slog off WWE again. Never mind that Raw's "key demo" rating is basically double what AEW gets. Nielsen themselves seem more interested in working out other sorts of demographics, including black viewers, Hispanic viewers and LGBT+ viewers. Cable has moved on from 18-49 as an umbrella demo -- all except for Meltzer and Showbuzz.

Long story short: Meltzer will spin the ratings whichever way he can to make WWE look bad. Viewership going up 200k and allowing advertisers to reach an audience a quarter the size of AEW's entire viewership -- young or old -- is undoubtedly a good thing. It doesn't mean all the WWE's issues disappear forever, but come the fuck on, lol. If you sell a fucking blender to 1% of that Raw audience, it's way more prestigious than selling a fucking Super-Soaker to some 45-year-old virgin watching AEW. You've still sold 19k blenders.

I'd like to hear about which show has the more culturally diverse audience too. You know, instead of the Meltzer spin making it sound like the 18-49 audience AEW gets (much less of than Raw, by the way) is some young and hip crowd, as opposed to being fat white people closer to 50 than 18, who still watch NXT on the WWE Network anyway.

Now Showbuzz's numbers suddenly are not good enough for you despite having no problems with them before, especially when it came to gloating or boasting about WWE's numbers over AEW.

I've never said the numbers aren't "good enough." The numbers are what they are. It's how you read them that matters. I don't doubt that Nielsen calculates 750k with a 0.25 demo or whatever to be AEW's purported numbers. It's just how literally and seriously you take that in 2020 or when the numbers are that low that a few boxes could throw them out, seemingly significantly.

I don't "gloat" about WWE's numbers. I just find it fun to point out when people "gloat" about Dynamite "beating" NXT by 11k viewers or whatever (which could mean one person with a box fell asleep), compared to the industry leader (apparently uncool), which more than doubles them in overall viewership and that alleged key demo. By that archaic system, AEW still doesn't perform like people try to will it to.

Again, I understand why people are biased, but it's just fucking frustrating for someone who likes to look at things logically to see "NXT UP!" as the ratings subheading, or whatever, and "Raw is fucking crashing" when Raw is doing significantly well compared to AEW, who don't even have a significant lead on the "competition" they are said to be beating each week. It's a crooked narrative.

How often does Meltzer talk about the key demo for Raw? Hardly fucking ever. It usually only comes up when talking about AEW because it is the one way they usually look somewhat significantly better than NXT. The story with Raw is the falling viewership. And when it's not the falling viewership, then we'll focus on the "key demo," which usually never comes up because it smokes AEW or was otherwise quite strong even prior to AEW starting up.

SmackDown aces the key demo almost every week on Fridays. It performs very well in that slot. Doesn't it usually get a 0.7? I think it tied someone this week. That's not important when talking about SmackDown though, because what is important is "tsk, tsk, viewership." Until that viewership goes up, then if the key demo sits around the same, it will be that they didn't increase that. It'd work the other way with AEW. If the viewership goes up, that will be the story, even if the key demo goes down -- but if the key demo is strong, then the viewership won't matter.

More often than you think considering that's what him and Alvarez usually do during their weekly Radio show, Newsletters, and websites and not just in response to AEW.

If your expecting detailed stuff from Meltzer for RAW, that's usually in his Newsletter.

If your expecting something similar to the breakdowns he does for AEW and NXT, your not really going to get that because there is no direct wrestling comparisons for Monday unlike Wednesday. Even he mentioned that's the reason he regained interest in doing detailed demo breakdowns because of the new Wednesday War. Closest your going to get for Mondays is whenever football or playoffs are on giving that day.

Literally from today's report on the Observer's website about RAW's ratings this week.

Last week's:

1st week of June:
This one did include a bit on AEW but more on them having the most viewers at home average by around a 0.1 of a difference that week compared to what they were averaging before. Also an update on Smackdown's rating since the prior week's numbers were thrown off by the protests and riots coverage.

I’m not saying he doesn’t include them numbers, Smeat. I’m saying he uses them in sly ways. Yes, usually on his radio shows. But look at the use of “even though” and “only.” I get why he does the anti-WWE thing.

AEW and NXT both bounced back up this week


AEW - 772k
NXT - 746k


https://i.postimg.cc/tCbYcJtQ/Screen...3-19-17-PM.png

Nice boost overall for both shows. The lack of any major sports competition helped as well.

Haven’t they been without major sports competition for weeks?

Last week had a NASCAR race which had some added interest over the whole Confederate flag controversy that ended up boosting its numbers more than usual.

The same 1.5 million fans each week give or take

SD had like 2.04 million or something

2 weeks later Backstage is canceled

Technically it will still air before PPVs, like a pre-kickoff 'kickoff show'

RAW - 1.922 million

Decent number considering it avoided the usual tumble downwards following a post-PPV bump and/or something big happening on the side.

Had the 1st hour not been stronger, probably would have been looking at a 1.8 million number for this week since the 3rd hour was a lot worse than last week.

NXT: 786,000
AEW: 633,000

Hmmm

Yeah, I wonder what caused the surge for NXT. Congrats to 'em, I like to see both Wednesday shows do well in the viewers department.

Not sure why AEW fluctuates between 100k viewers up and down every other week. No rhyme or reason to it.

in b4 Gertner and Noid post about AEW being in trouble

lol

Bahahahahaha CRUSHED!

Hey AEW, 2014 Impact called. They want their ratings back.

Lol that's what happens when you put a comedy wrestler in your Main Event

Take it from here Noid

Because it's the same 1.5 million fans watching AEW and NXT. That's what happens when you cater to a niche audience of a niche audience.

Seems it might have been older viewers because they tipped the scales by a lot since NXT had a 0.42 and AEW hd just a 0.26. That's the only area in the demos where whatever AEW lost, NXT gained that amount.

Whatever caused the decline in key demo viewers, it wasn't because of NXT since they didn't gain them. Probably wasn't even anything AEW related except maybe for the main event since NXT had the hyped up Triple Threat match but that wouldn't have been enough to cause that kind of a shift to happen.

Ahahahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHA!

Taker Tribute SD episode - 2.174 million

Big Show = Death


1.735 million

https://i.postimg.cc/3NdYtg2f/1-point-735.png

I expect NXT to beat AEW this week too. WWE's done a good job promoting the Great American Bash and there is a lot of interest in Sasha vs Io

I expect WWE Main Event to beat AEW this week as well. Same with Sunday Night Heat, Velocity and Jakked

Not surprised since the (big) show did feel pretty boring overall and the spike in interest and curiosity from Prichard running things wasn't going to last long.

Pretty much if you like his handling of Smackdown in recent weeks, then your going to like RAW since its pretty much the same thing. If not, then there really isn't that much of a bright spot for the brand since almost all of the new guys and stuff Heyman was pushing got tossed to the side.

Compared to 2 years ago...

https://i.postimg.cc/sDxsRBT9/Screen...6-20-10-PM.png

18 - 49 down almost 50%

18 - 34 down more than 50%

12 - 34 down more than 50%

25 - 54 down almost 50%

50 + down about 25%

Lol, Raw did about three times as many viewers as AEW.

AEWs big problem is night 2 if Moxley/Cage doesn't happen which is supposed to be taped on thursday.

Night 1 (tonight's card) looks good on paper but night 2 next week without Mox/Cage will be bad

Isn't Mox confirmed for the show? Either way, I think Jericho and Cassidy sinks it.

What I read was he's tested negative a bunch of times but that doesn't mean anything.

If he’s tested negative, they’ll let him work.

I was correct


AEW: 748,000
NXT: 792,000


#6 and #13

https://i.postimg.cc/13kn8wjS/Screen...3-14-20-PM.png

Stardust vs Jack Swagger didn't draw. Who would have thought.

R.I.P AEW. They just just sell the assets at this point.

Remember when Chris Jericho said AEW is "the cool place to be". Lol.

wwe sucks

"Look how scared WWE, running Great American Bash just so AND WE LOST!" ~ AEW Fanboys

Also "MUH DEMOS, COWBOY SHIT!"

"But, but, but what about the DVR numbers? That counts!"

AEW finally defeated it's #1 competitor, Guy's Grocery Games in 18-49

Flavortown found deceased


https://i.postimg.cc/13kn8wjS/Screen...3-14-20-PM.png

Makes sense NXT won again since neither show was going to drop this week with how loaded they were and too much ground for AEW to make up in that case.

AEW getting their usual demo numbers back just opens up more questions on what was it about last week that caused that huge drop to happen since now it doesn't seem to have been anything actually related to AEW or even NXT.

No surprise. I figured AEW would close the gap a little bit out of hardcore fan pity. People would have seen the ratings slaughter last week (a proper one, not a few thousand viewers) and tuned in to help them out. That goodwill is going to fade though. NXT just had to keep putting on less offensive content.

Chris Jericho vs. Orange Cassidy next week and no AEW Title match. I imagine that will hurt the hardcores’ patience with it.

There is never any rhyme or reason to the drops/gains of 100k or so viewers IMO. It never makes sense and is so random.

It’s not so random. Jericho and Cassidy trailed NXT by 300k viewers last week, haha.

Alvarez mentioned recently on the Observer forums that wasn't the actual cause for last week's drop once the segment breakdowns started to come in from Neilsen.

Simple reason is AEW's core is still way more violate than NXT which is why they are more like RAW and NXT is more like SD if you were to put their ratings in a graph form.

NXT's core is pretty much WWE's older audience and it takes a lot more for them to sway hard in either direction. Even if NXT didn't have WWE's older audience doing all the heavy lifting, they'd likely still have smaller waves in the graph than AEW.

Current theory going around for months is AEW audience in general is a lot more susceptible to outside factors which is why whenever something big happens in sports or news, they usually get hit harder since that is where their attention went to for that week.

Looking forward to the Chris Jericho vs Santino Marella main event next week

Because that 100,000 represents probably 20 nerds with a Nelson box.


OMG Jericho again going full MUH DEMOS!

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Here’s a lesson about television ratings kids. Last night <a href="https://twitter.com/AEWrestling?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AEWrestling</a> was NUMBER 6 in the 18-49 demo. To tv networks &amp; advertisers it’s the ONLY number that matters and we were up 31% in that area! So once again <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEWDynamite?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEWDynamite</a> is the REAL winner in the Wed night ratings war! <a href="https://t.co/JzZU5X779t">pic.twitter.com/JzZU5X779t</a></p>&mdash; Chris Jericho (@IAmJericho) <a href="https://twitter.com/IAmJericho/status/1278800960618364931?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 2, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

What a joke Mark

Of course he'll say that. You make your parody of your genre the focus, you're going to become a parody of yourself. That is common sense. Meltzer and Alvarez aren't on the take, but they've got their reputations hinging on these guys knowing what the fuck they are doing, since this is basically "How to do wrestling with lessons learnt from the Observer and The Death of WCW."

The superior (using that word loosely) wrestling product is winning.

Love Jericho's passion, truly unmatched what a gift he has been to AEW and wrestling.

At what point does passion become shilling?

Him going full demos sounds pretty much exactly like most of the shills on Reddit.

Weren't you and Noid talking about how ratings are fake and don't mean anything when AEW was winning for like 95% of the other weeks

Yeah, just like I did five posts ago...

Seriously though, I never said they were fake. Just an insignificant metric because such a limited sample size simply cannot represent accurate data.

AND I was making fun of people getting hyped over 100,000 and Especially 20,000 in a specific demo, like Jericho did.

Yes, yes they were, primarily because they know absolutely jack shit about how actual ratings are calculated or what they mean to broadcasters or advertisers.

In fact, Jericho is 100% correct.

50+ viewers (and shows who have majority viewers who are majority 50+) are basically meaningless for advertisers because a huge % of them don't spend for shit, especially based on or because of advertising. After 18-49, 12-18 is the next best target demographic, but they have significantly less spending power and influence, and most of their actual spending power comes from their parents in 18-49 group.

That's why unless you have a HUGE number of 50+ viewers, even if you have more total viewers, you're going to rank significantly worse than the programs who may have less total viewers but a large % of them are age 18-49. That's why AEW beat WWE, and also why MTV, etc., beats Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, etc.

Actually, I know exactly how advertisers and tv execs view the numbers. In fact my argument has always been that it is a very archaic way of looking at it.

Nielsen's own estimates puts there being 120+ million households with tvs, representing 307+ million television watchers.

So out of 120+ million households, Nielsen uses roughly 40,000 Nelson boxes to obtain data, then apply their formula from 40,000 boxes to forecast what 307+ million people are watching, based on the average ages of people living in those 40,000 households.

If you use that, you are saying 1 box represents what 2999 other households are watching, or 0.0003% sample size.

The number of total viewers per household is a bit over 2.5 people, for 100,000 total viewers which would mean their estimates are based on 0.0008%, a bit better, but still not even a half of a half of 1%.

The 70,000 difference in viewers in the 18-49 age range stems from a difference of 21 boxes in households that have somebody that age.

Advertisers and TV execs and anybody else putting any substance whatsoever in what these numbers represent, the difference in viewing habits of 21 people, well like I said, tv ratings in 2020 mean jack shit.

The ratings aren't fake, but they aren't exactly reliable. Nielsen themselves cite a 10% margin of error on them. It's why AEW fanboys getting super-psyched by an alleged 7k win is fucking ridiculous. The only people who take the numbers that literally are AEW fans and Dave Meltzer.

Insert the Mitch Hedberg joke about 1 million people auditioning for American Idol. What an oddly specific number. You'd think it would be 1 million and 2 or something.

Yep, exactly this. NXT's "win" this week wasn't by any definitive margin. But it is nice cosmic justice to see the "technicalities' swap side to favor the better overall product.

Haha, you're just sore because all the criticisms about AEW are completely true.

Advertisers do care about older demos, you fucking git. 18-49 meant something once, but now advertisers have access to and are way more interested in more diverse information. In addition to that, the economic structure of demographics have surely shifted, as has the average age of the person who still has fucking cable. Never mind that younger people can be watching at people's houses that factor into other demos, and those demos can buy for other demos. Fuck's sake, man -- take Meltzer's dick out of your mouth. ;)

A lot of advertisers have moved to different mediums too, because appealing to 200,000 white 45 year olds on basic cable may not be the best way to really get your product out there these days.

Boom.

Turns out it's a marathon, not a sprint.

I’m sure they can change things around in editing, but the match order for AEW next week sounds HORRIBLE. They’ve basically set it up to lose viewers all throughout the show.

By the way, Q7 and Q8 of last week's show lost ~70k viewers overall, and Jericho and OC ended on ~548k viewers to NXT's 852k, which is even worse than they were initially suspected to have done. So much for "Nah, not them." Yah, yes them.

Other than the week SD was on FS1 this has to be their worst rating since going to FOX

Probably safe to blame the 4th of July


https://i.postimg.cc/5tvP6qzC/Fast-D...Jul-03-FRI.png

SD - 1.776 million
RAW - 1.735 million
NXT - 792k
AEW - 748k

Wow. Last place.

R.I.P AEW

Maybe but more likely people just lost interest again in SD since its been mostly meaningless for a while now. Even last week's show didn't really do much to build real interest for this week's show.

Only ABC really suffered as bad this week while CBS and NBC improved. The latter wouldn't have been the case if it was holiday related.

If it wasn't for the heavy promoted Taker tribute stuff, last week's show probably would have been around 1.9 to 1.8 and making this week's drop a lot less severe.

Lol, tied for second best in the demo on 4th July weekend. “They did their worst number ever! They don’t mean anything!” When AEW falls out the bottom by >300k to their nearest competition, it’s because of outside factors, the news or some other mystery and Jericho has “passion” for shitting all over every demo they specifically lost in. :lol:

Can’t wait for Alvarez to speculate that everyone’s remote was broken last week, and they got automatically switched over to NXT and couldn’t change back.

Bryan Alvarez is a fucking saint!

Considering most of the programming on the networks was re-runs, SD only managing to tie for 2nd place and having those abysmal numbers is something not worth gloating over these days.

Even worse considering the recent news of FOX gutting a bunch of their sports programming due to high costs and poor ratings.

This battle between Smackdown and re-runs of Shark Tank and World of Dance is HOT!

If WWE wants to hit the target numbers FOX is expecting, a World of Dance x WWE crossover involving Fandango would do that trick.

Just need to pluck him away from NXT first regardless of any fit Triple H might throw over losing any star power there.

Get Vince back on commentary if you want ratings

BOOM SHAKALAKA!

I'm not even kidding, angry senile old man Vince on commentary would be incredible.

Oh, forgot to leave out the virus as an excuse for AEW whenever they tank. And they’re certainly doing well against such dynamic programming like the news and Guy Fieri.

Wrestling is in a hole. But it’s not just SmackDown that is shit. AEW is the drizzles. Jericho vs. David Arquette next week. At least SmackDown does have Daniel Bryan, Nakamura, Cesaro, Gulak, Styles, Morrison and Riddle doing way better shit than anything you see on Dynamite. It’s the best “main roster” show out there. And that’s not even praise. It should be properly good.