[Emperor Smeat]

The Sheets (Observer Newsletter Edition):

World Wrestling Entertainment gave a very enthusiastic look at its future on the 4/22 investors conference headed by President Nick Khan, with Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon and Chief Financial Officer Kristina Salen ... AEW was brought up by callers but nobody in the company mentioned them, and when competition was talked about, gave the line that everything on television and streaming is all competition. That was the line they had used for most of the last 36 years, saying other wrestling companies aren’t direct competition but everything from movies to other television to other sports are competition. But AEW, as newer and not as proven content, may not share in these media revenue increases even with higher ratings as much as the major established sports brands. He said he didn’t believe it would be with NBC and positioned it like the NXT move to Wednesday had nothing to do with NBC Sports Network being shut down and the key sports, which this year would include Wednesday night NHL, moving to USA. As for WWE, while domestic rights to Raw and Smackdown are under contract through October 2025, meaning the serious negotiations won’t be until 2024, what they are looking at now is following up the Peacock deal by selling streaming rights to the WWE Network to different companies in different markets at a similar premium price ... Even though the WWE Network still exists, and in theory would have about 400,000 international subscribers, it is notable that the numbers were not talked about nor were they listed by the company in its financial reports or in its Key Performance Indicators, which is now a skeleton of what it once was, listing only television ratings, social media followers, video views and house show attendance, the latter of which hasn’t been applicable for a year. WWE exceeded market expectation for the first quarter, with $263,524,000 in revenue and $43,765,000 in profits. For the first quarter last year, which did include two plus months of house shows, the figures were $291,009,000 in revenue and $24,145,000 in profits. Analysts were expecting on average $257,500,000 in revenue and $17 million in profits, so they beat that handily. A key to the difference was a $35,857,000 increase in network and PPV revenues. The key to this difference was the nature of the first payment from Peacock to WWE being a large lump sum, as Peacock only covered the last 13 days of the quarter. It was noted that the nature of the payments will lead to some quarters up and some down. The company talked about going back to full touring starting in the second half of the year, but wouldn’t give any details past that. They indicated that it would be like in the past, with television tapings with fans and live events coinciding with them. The company said that WrestleMania was the most viewed live event in the history of Peacock, which was expected because they’ve never had a live sports event so big on the network as an exclusive. They gave no figures at all, and when asked how the number of viewers compared to last year, only said that Peacock asked that they not give that information, but said Peacock told them they were pleased. The only announcement regarding new content is they had reached a deal with Crunchyroll for a new multi-episode amine series. They also noted that the 4/18 A&E Biography special on Steve Austin was the most-watched Biography show on the station in 16 years, which is crazy impressive considering how much television ratings have dropped over the years. Khan also talked about getting into the NFT business. “We're always looking at new streams of revenue. On April 10th, our first day of WrestleMania, we dropped our first NFT featuring iconic moments from the Undertaker's legendary WWE career. Many of these sold out in seconds. We were thrilled with our first foray into the space. Considering our vast library of wholly owned intellectual property, look for more NFTs from us in the near future.” Vince McMahon in his brief talk said that this was the best management team in WWE history, and talked of how innovative they are and how he’s more excited about the company than at any time in history. “We're coming out of COVID. At first, we were in survival mode, but we found life,” said Vince McMahon. “Once we felt secure, we then saw this as an opportunity to rethink the way we do business and open what I call the WWE treasure chest. The only way you're going to do that is that the best management team in WWE history. We have that team. A team that's innovative and it drives revenue and as reorganized our company in far more efficient way to take advantage of new revenue streams, new online platforms, new consumer products, content creation, and new opportunities to expand our media rights portfolio on a global basis. I'm always excited about our business. I don't think I've ever been as excited as I am now.” Stephanie McMahon and Kristina Salen talked about how more than 50,000 people attended WrestleMania (the total in the building both nights, between paid, paper and sold tickets who didn’t attend were 43,987 but they always use the announced number in these calls). She said media coverage was up 25 percent, which would be a combination of the fact they had fans and also had Bad Bunny and Logan Paul on the show. She also noted the two celebrities when talking about the increase in coverage. She also noted the new DraftKings partnership as well as a 14 percent increase in video views and nine percent increase in total time of videos viewed. It was also mentioned that in Hispanic households in the 18-34 demo, shows with Bad Bunny were 31 percent higher than usual. Overall numbers didn’t show much of a difference on shows he was on vs. shows he wasn’t on, and obviously the day after Mania, a show he wasn’t on, was much larger in all key demos as was this past week, also a show he wasn’t on. But it would make sense he would be a difference maker in the younger Hispanic demo. She also talked about the Night Panther character (Rick Bugenhagen) in the Old Spice commercials. She also said that they see the potential of sponsorship increases because their talent are influencers. She also brought up the new company slogan, saying it was based on the last year showing how much live fans were important to the product, saying it’s “Then, Now, Forever, Together.” The company has used its cash flow increases and profits to both buy back $78 million in stock and pay $100 million back in credit loans it had taken out for expansion. They are also looking at increasing spending, earmarking $65 million to $85 million in construction for a new headquarters and for technology infrastructure. With the stock buybacks and loan repayment, the company which had $593,397,000 in cash and cash equivalents on hand on 12/31, now has $461,114,000, which is still a very healthy number. They still have $200 million in debt capacity after paying back the $100 million ... Regarding AEW, when Brandon Ross noted that AEW is reaching record viewership, Khan said that everything is competition and they are focused on attracting eyeballs to their content. Khan also said that he thinks Apple TV will get into broadcasting live events. He said that they haven’t decided yet but he’s looking at their moves and believes that is their direction. They noted that the costs for the Thunderdome shows in the first quarter were 30 percent higher than they were spending for live arena shows. In the second quarter, because the number will be compared to the Performance Center shows, which were comparatively cheap to produce, that even though they have been able to cut the cost per episode of the Thunderdome shows down, the percentage of costs increase over the quarter two shows will be significant. In vague terms, they talked about the big international event (Saudi Arabia) and obviously hope to do it before the end of the year but there was no announcement or anything specific said. They did note the ratings for the Superstar Spectacular in India was five times higher than their usual programming does, and that the streaming numbers in China with their new partnership are up 30 percent. As compared to the first quarter last year, the key is that with the Peacock deal and the advance on the deal, they took in $79,392,000 in network and PPV as compared with $43,535,000 last year. Core content rights fees, which is worldwide revenue for Raw, Smackdown and NXT went up from $133,197,000 to $139,739,000, a combination of new deals and escalators in the existing deals. Advertising and sponsorships dropped from $17,348,000 to $15,596,000. They were also down in revenue because they got paid in the first quarter of last year for a Saudi Arabia show. Licensing was up from $7,719,000 for the quarter last year to $11,039,000. Merchandise through the Internet increased from $6,008,000 to $9,986,000. As noted before, when house shows stopped, merchandise on the Internet took a major growth to the point that actual merchandise sold in the first quarter. Regarding ratings, Raw over the quarter was down 17.1 percent from last year in total viewers. USA Network was down 14 percent, but that’s misleading because Raw is such a key component in their average. USA averaged 816,000 viewers in prime time in quarter one last year, but this year without Raw, that average would be 578,000. So NXT is a little above that average last year. This year it’s 705,000 including Raw and 513,000, so taking Raw out the drop is 11.2 percent. The top cable stations were down 10.8 percent. But Raw’s second quarter is not going to show that level of a drop because of the Thunderdome. Smackdown dropped 12.0 percent in the first quarter from last year as compared to 19.4 percent for the four major networks in prime time, so it is holding up better than average. The FOX Network as a whole is down 44.2 percent, but that’s because they’ve cut back on new entertainment shows so greatly,.

Actual information on WrestleMania attendance came earlier than expected due to Brandon Thurston getting the info from the Tampa Sports Authority. The actual number of ticket holders in the building for the 4/10 show at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa was 18,328 and the 4/11 show drew 18,924. What was notable, which would be because of scalpers not being able to sell tickets, that actual paid numbers, which would be the numbers that you would normally use for sports attendance, was 19,916 in ticket sales and a gate of $3,058,140 for 4/10 and 20,455 and a gate of $3,187,465 for the second night. The difference between the 18,328 number and the 19,916 number would be secondary market purchasers who didn’t sell their tickets or people who had tickets and decided not to come, perhaps for weather reasons. When it comes to actually announcing attendance, generally the paid number is the one used and not the drop count (number actually in the building). The total number of tickets out, which would be paid plus comps, were 21,854 the first night and 22,113 the second night. WWE announced both nights as sellouts of 25,675 fans. It would appear that the actual number tickets, both paid and comps, distributed, were just over 22,000 since the second night had less than 100 tickets left a few hours before press time and was likely a legitimate sellout, while the first night was a few hundred shy of that. That number would be almost identical with the Super Bowl game held two months earlier in the same stadium, which drew 14,500 or so paid and 22,000 total and was an instant sellout. WWE likes to run in the same stadiums after the Super Bowl and then announce a larger attendance than the Super Bowl (even though it is almost never the case), although this year putting big attendance figures in live events is generally not considered a positive (hence New Japan actually under reporting paid for night one of the Tokyo Dome). But WWE did on both nights outdraw WrestleKingdom for the largest pro wrestling attendance figures since the 2020 Royal Rumble in Houston. Of the tickets sold, 7,952 were people who bought two-day packages and individual tickets sold were 11,964 and 12,503 respectively. There were 256 suite holders for the first night and 179 for the second night. Ticket revenue was broken down as 4/10 with $57,600 (256) from suites, $843,230 (7,952) from two-day ticket sales and $2,157,310 (12,200) from single day ticket sales. For 4/11, the numbers were $40,275 (179) from suites, $843,230 (7,952) from two-day ticket sales and $2,303,960 (13,738) from single day ticket sales. The gist of all this isn’t that it was good or bad. It was what it was. The conditions were unique. By normal WrestleMania standards of course this wouldn’t be good, but, unlike with UFC, which is selling far better now than it was pre-pandemic, wrestling fans simply aren’t as apt to buy tickets or travel to shows as UFC fans, likely due to the difference politically between the two fan bases ... WWE claimed its largest per-capita merchandise sales for any WrestleMania. That would make sense because those who did attend would have been the die-hard fans more than any other year.

Mark Carrano, the Senior Director of Talent Relations, was let go by WWE on 4/22 after a public embarrassment when Mickie James-Aldis noted that after being fired last week, her belongings that the company had were sent back to her in a garbage bag by Carrano. She wasn’t the only woman who got her belongings sent in a garbage bag this past week. Multiple female performers have confirmed the same thing happened with them, this week and has happened in the past, some claiming dating back more than a decade. One woman noted that she was actually sent the belongings of another woman in the garbage bag that arrived at her place of residence. It was noted by Paul Levesque, Stephanie McMahon and John Laurinaitis as soon as the story broke that the person who did this, who wasn’t named, was fired immediately. “We have drawers that travel as well (as bringing stuff from home to the shows,” said one woman performer. “So we leave little things we may need from week-to-week, our gear, makeup, shoes etc. We take our gear bag home, but a lot of people have heavy gear that is easier to leave at the venue.” Another talent noted to us, “Talent who is let go, if anything of theirs is left behind at arenas, it’s boxed up and sent back to their homes. I don’t think sending it in a garbage bag was to be mean. It was done in a way that was just like stuff in a bag, put it in a box and get it back to them. But it could be interpreted as disrespectful during an already hard time as a released talent. Which in Mickie’s case she felt it symbolized that was all she was worth, which is not the case! But yes, it could have been handled better.” James-Aldis sent a tweet with a photo of the garbage bag that arrived, saying “Dear Vince McMahon. I’m not sure if you’re aware. I did receive my WWE care package today. Thank you.” Stephanie McMahon, immediately after getting off the conference call that day and finding out, tweeted publicly, “I am embarrassed you or anyone else would be treated this way. I apologize personally and on behalf of WWE. The person responsible is no longer with our company. At about the same time Levesque wrote on Twitter, “Upon learning of the disrespectful treatment some of our recently released talent received on behalf of the company, we took immediate action. The person responsible for this inconsiderate action has been fired and is no longer with WWE.” Laurinaitis tweeted word-for-word the same thing. Laurinaitis called up some of the women performers to personally apologize for the company. Carrano was immediately let go when they found he either sent or authorized sending the package. Carrano was best known to fans as a recurring cast member of Total Divas and Total Bellas in his role as liaison to talent. However, women who had been in the company in the past said that this was commonplace. Gail Kim, who had two runs with the company, as did Maria Kanellis-Bennett, seemed to confirm the same thing happened with them. Kanellis wrote, “Was the person also fired from 2010? This is not the fault of that one individual. It is a company wide cultural problem. It comes from the top.” Kim noted that they had done that when and before she was there. “Well I’m glad Hunter took initiative but it’s been happening since before I was there. Is it always the same person? At least they did something I suppose.” When it was brought up that Stephanie apologized Kim said, “Well, in that case every girl that worked there for the past ten years plus should get an apology.” Also let go were Nicole Zeoli from the talent relations department, while John Cone, best known as a referee, was relieved of his job in talent relations but will remain as a referee. We were told that the decisions regarding the two were not related to the garbage bag incident as only Carrano was let go for that reason.

Konnan, 57, is feeling better after a bad bout with COVID. He had a number of health problems and tests and he did find out this past week that he didn’t have cancer or a tumor, but is in need of a second kidney transplant. He doesn’t need dialysis yet but that day will come. He’s on a waiting list in California but that can be a seven-year wait so he’s looking at getting it done in Mexico.

With yet another state of emergency declared in Japan, shows from 4/29 to 5/9 in either Tokyo or Osaka are in danger. New Japan isn’t running those cities during those dates so right now so it’s not an issue. But that could change if things stay bad, as they have major shows on 5/15 in Yokohama (a Tokyo suburb) at the Stadium and 5/29 at the Tokyo Dome

C.M. Punk acknowledged the challenge by Will Ospreay for an IWGP title match. He told Digital Spy he would revisit the idea in a few months if Ospreay is still champion. “I don’t want to give people false hope in answering Ospreay,” he said. “But he’s for sure somebody that I’ve never wrestled before that interests me a lot more than, I guess, the corporate side of professional wrestling nowadays.” He also spoke to Sports illustrated about returning to wrestling and said, “I don’t know. I’ve said no before in interviews. I’m not fishing for a deal. I get offered to do a lot of stuff, and I say no to 90 percent of it just because my thing is I need to work with quality human beings. It just seems like maybe in pro wrestling there is a lack of quality human beings. I don’t know. I like doing fun, quality projects. If there is a fun, quality wrestling project that gets sent my way, I will listen to it.” “I don’t need the money. And the way the wrestling business is now, it’s wacky. You’ve got WWE, who has multiple billion-dollar television deals, and the television’s awful. I go back there, I’m just another guy. And it’s not even that—I’d be just another guy that’s doing not-good television. I want to do stuff that’s good. I want my name attached to quality projects, where it’s fun and it makes people laugh, smile, think and people don’t hate watching it. I want to do fun stuff.

Rush’s new promotion in Mexico is being called Federacion Wrestling. Right now the plan seems to be for a June PPV show as the debut, listing Rush, brother Dragon Lee, father Bestia del Ring, as well as La Mascara, Andrade and Kenny King not being announced but strongly hinted

Terry Funk, 76, recently contracted COVID-19, believed to be from attending church a few weeks ago, but aside from being in isolation, he seems to be doing fine

There is a new company opening up in Mexico that has offered a number of wrestlers far more than they are earning elsewhere. All we know is that it’s one of the major concert promoters behind it. He wants to get top stars under exclusive deals and is telling people he has leads on getting television. But he’s making a big play for stars like Rush, Dragon Lee and Andrade el Idolo. All three turned him down because they want to be free agents, plus Rush is also planning on starting his own company and Lee and Andrade would likely work dates for him, but also be free to work for AAA

FITE TV is no longer carrying Impact+. Impact+ is looking at rolling subscribers into their own system with a new look, new shows and new benefits for subscribers that will roll out over the next few months

Scott D’Amore talked about the idea of the TNA brand returning. They own the name, but the name also has a very negative connotation to most fans. Although perhaps in time that has changed because wrestling fans are into nostalgia and the idea things were better in their childhood and TNA was around during many fans’ childhoods. “As we come out of this pandemic environment and get back out there, certainly that's a possibility. It's a possibility that the TNA brand could return. I think it's one of the things many - and certainly not at the top of the list - but one of the things that the pandemic has robbed us of is that opportunity to see a return of TNA. We have so many unbelievable Knockouts. Maybe we'll end up continuing to grow the Knockouts division and give them their own separate platform.

The Blood & Guts show will only have one live match, the Blood & Guts match with The Inner Circle vs. The Pinnacle. Tony Schiavone called it “An historic one-match event in Jacksonville.” It’ll be under the original 1987 version of War Games rules. Unlike the WWE version, there are no pins, only submission/surrender, which is a plus. Unlike WWE, there is a roof on top of the cage. The non-roof WWE version is an improvement because it allows for off the top spots which are the biggest spots in the WWE matches. The rest of the show will consist of video packages building the match, There will be taped match footage for the live crowd. I guess the idea is to experiment with the idea of a one-match television show. There were famous one-match television shows done before, regularly in Japan but in the Crockett days they did famous Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham, Midnight Express vs. Fantastics and Flair vs. Ronnie Garvin matches, and Polynesian Pro Wrestling and World Class both did complete one-match shows with Flair and Kerry Von Erich. Still, those were all one hour television shows, not two hour shows. Right now the idea is to increase capacity to 2,500 for that show, and the same or more likely for 5/30. Of course that depends on ticket demand. Machine Gun Kelly is doing a concert on 4/23 at Daily’s Place that will have 5,000 people and a lot depends on how they do. The reality is open air is so much safer than indoors which has become more clear in the latest stats from foreign countries that have tracked spread more closely then the U.S. Everyone knew it was safer but there’s really a huge difference. An interesting note is that the Kelly concert is a partnership in promotion with UFC (helping bring him in since they have a PPV the next night) and the Khan family With only one match taped, they will tape again on 5/12, which would put them on schedule for 5/26 and 6/2 as they always do the eight days in Jacksonville the week of the PPV

Regarding the Jim Ross podcast mention of AEW Dynamite going on the road full-time starting in July, everything right now is up in the air depending on what the condition everything is in. But what he said is basically accurate in the sense that if everything goes well going forward with the country and COVID, that would be the hope

205 Live continues to stream at 10 p.m. on Friday nights, but unlike with the WWE Network, there are no replays available until 15 days later. Replays are available the next day on Hulu. The new delay has to do with the contract WWE signed with Hulu which allowed 205 Live to air on WWE Network but they would get 15 days streaming exclusivity otherwise

Regarding Adnan Virk, as noted, that was a Nick Khan move. Khan was his agent before Khan took the WWE job. He’s only in week two and is about what you would think from someone who wasn’t a major fan thrown in after two weeks. Virk was on the Ryan Rusillo show and Rusillo noted that he never remembered Virk ever talking about wrestling when they worked together. Virk noted that he doesn’t want to be disingenuous and tell people he’s a guy who always watched Raw and Smackdown. He said he’s got four kids and is always working, baseball, college football and college basketball and is approaching wrestling like he would any other broadcast job and doing research before the broadcast, noting that he looked up stuff on Shayna Baszler by going on wwe.com

Regarding the cuts last week, most were people that weren’t being used. One was someone who was apparently let go because of the feeling they were outwardly unhappy about not being part of WrestleMania. The Kalisto story is that he cut his own throat months back. The Lucha House Party was the idea of Lince Dorado. He figured that his idea would work to a certain degree because they’d make some merch and sell some merch money, and even if not pushed, Vince would go for it because it appealed to his idea of Mexican stereotypes. And he was right, as Vince greenlit it. Gran Metalik said nothing. He’s happy being paid more than he’s ever made before even if he’s wasting his prime as far as being able to get recognized for his ability. But he just goes with the flow and backed up Dorado. Over time Kalisto grew unhappy about being part of an act that was booked as prelim jokes. He even made a tweet about it. Kalisto kept asking out of the group and was continually told no. But Dorado asked if he and Metalik could be the team since Kalisto wanted out anyway, so they shot the angle for the split. There were never any plans to do anything with the split and it was just a way to pacify Kalisto. But the other two kept being brought to TV, whether to lose or work Main Event or occasionally get a win, even if was to be bodies to chase the 24/7 brigade while Kalisto simply wasn’t booked anymore and was cut

The Mansoor winning streak, which is never referred to as much but he’s on Main Event almost every week winning and hasn’t lost a match since August 23, 2019, losing in Sanford, FL to Dominik Dijakovic (and had a TV loss to Damien Priest the week earlier) is appease the benefactors in Saudi Arabia. It is interesting politically that they would have the win streak, but never acknowledge it in the U.S., and not put it on Raw or Smackdown with the idea of attempting to push him as a legit international star

Ratings:

SPOILER: show

For the week of 4/12 to 4/18, Raw at 0.68 was first of all shows on cable TV in 18-49. AEW at 0.44 was tied for fifth with Real Housewives of Atlanta and Curse of Oak Island. 90 Day Fiancé was second at 0.67. Challenge on MTV was third at 0.53 and the Sunday Night NBA game on ESPN was fourth at 0.46. So AEW was TNT’s highest rated show for the week, and second in sports (USA does not categorize wrestling as sport while TNT and FOX do) for the week. Raw is always USA’s highest rated show. Due to higher ratings this coming week for news shows, particularly 4/20 with the Derek Chauvin verdict coming in, the wrestling shows won’t be faring as well in the standings this week.

Raw’s number on 4/19 held up well from the show after WrestleMania, doing 1,907,000 viewers and an 0.61 (792,000 viewers) in 18-49. Aside from last week’s Raw after WrestleMania and the Legends Night in January, it was the largest audience and largest 18-49 for Raw since August. Raw was first in 18-49 and ninth in total viewers for the night on cable. Overall it was tied with Hannity for first in women 18-49, was first in men 18-49 (beating the NBA game 0.77 to 0.76; NBA overall did 1,472,000 viewers and 0.49), second to the NBA in 18-34, first in women 12-34, and third (behind two NBA games in men 12-34). As compared to last week, while there were declines, there should have been declines and one would have expected larger declines across the board. The show was down 5.9 percent in viewers, 10.5 percent in 18-49 and 20.7 percent in 18-34. The most significant, since this was a non-special show, is that the Thunderdome shows may be going forward ahead of the dead Performance Center shows at the same period last year. As compared to last year, the show was up 3.5 percent in viewers, 8.9 percent in 18-49 and 33.3 percent in 18-34. The first hour did 2,017,000 viewers. The second hour did 1,981,000 viewers. The third hour did 1,724,000 viewers. The show did 149,000 viewers in men 18-34 (down 19.0 percent), 105,000 in women 18-34 (down 4.5 percent), 349,000 viewers in men 35-49 (down 11.8 percent) and 189,000 in women 35-49 (up 2.7 percent). The first-to-third hour drops were 8.7 percent in women 18-49, 8.8 percent in men 18-49, 34.1 percent in teenage girls, 22.8 percent in teenage boys and 15.5 percent in over 50. The show did a 0.25 in 12-17 (down 26.5 percent from last week), 0.36 in 18-34 (down 20.7 percent), 0.86 in 35-49 (down 3.0 percent) and 0.91 in 50+ (same as last week).

Smackdown on 4/16 did a 1.32 rating, with 2,119,000 viewers (1.33 viewers per home) and an 0.56 in 18-49 (719,000 viewers) as well as an 0.29 in 18-34. Of the eight shows on network television, Smackdown tied for third in 18-49 (Shark Tank was first at 0.69) and was fourth in 18-34 (Shark Tank first at 0.43). Smackdown was in last place in women 18-49 but first place with men 18-49, last place in over 50 and last place by a wide margin (second to last was Dateline at 2,843,000) in total viewers. The NBA game on ESPN head-to-head did 885,000 viewers and 0.29. Smackdown was up 3.1 percent in homes watching, but due to a major decrease in viewers per home, total audience was down 5.6 percent, 18-49 was down 9.2 percent and 18-34 was down 21.6 percent. But last week’s show was pushed as WrestleMania Smackdown and the show should decline, plus Cesaro vs. Jey Uso wasn’t a strong marquee main event. As compared to last year, the show was down 5.0 percent in homes, 3.1 percent in viewers, 6.1 percent in 18-49 and 27.5 percent in 18-34. The major take is the show was down from usual with women. The show did 136,000 viewers in male 18-34 (down 2.9 percent from last week), 67,000 in women 18-34 (down 42.2 percent0, 326,000 in men 35-49 (up 14.0 percent) and 194,000 in women 35-49 (down 18.4 percent).

NXT was up on 4/20 to 841,000 viewers, with an 0.23 (293,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.10 in 18-34. Due to all the news coverage from the verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, it fell to No. 27, but was No. 7 among non-news shows. The head-to-head NBA game on TNT did 872,000 viewers and 0.29 and Curse of Oak Island on The History Channel did 2,939,000 viewers and 0.50. It was up 4.4 percent in viewers, 1.7 percent in 18-49 and down 4.3 percent in 18-34. The show did 41,000 in men 18-34 (up 5.1 percent), 26,000 in women 18-34 (down 16.1 percent), 131,000 in men 35-49 (up 3.1 percent) and 95,000 in women 35-49 (up 4.4 percent). As compared to one year ago, when it had competition, it was up 21,1 percent in viewers, 22.2 percent in 18-49 but even in 18-34.

AEW fell to what is likely close to what will be its usual numbers on 4/21 doing 1,104,000 viewers and an 0.37 (485,000 viewers) in 18-49 and 0.17 in 18-34. This was in line with what previous standalone days did in 18-49, but the 18-34 number would have to be a disappointment even though the total viewer number would have been considered great two weeks ago. The viewers didn’t drop nearly as much as the key demos did from last week. It could be last week was an aberration from the first week with no competition and it’ll settle at a lower number, or that last week had to do with Mike Tyson boosting the numbers. The big drop really was in 18-34. It was down 9.4 percent in total viewers, but down 14.5 percent in 18-49 and 34.8 percent in 18-34, the latter a very significant drop and really notable. The key is that this week it drew a significantly older skewing audience than last week, even though the show was built around Darby Allin vs. Jungle Boy and Hikaru Shida vs. Tay Conti, which in theory should appeal to younger viewers. Still, AEW was in second place to Challenge on MTV (0.58; 990,000 viewers) and first in men 18-49. It was sixth in women 18-49, sixth in 18-34, fifth in women 12-34 and fifth in men 12-34. ESPN didn’t air NBA although there were games on NBA TV which drew much lower audiences than usual. The leading sports competition was Major League Baseball which did 835,000 viewers and an 0.25. The show did 61,000 in male 18-34 (down 36.5 percent), 57,000 in women 18-34 (down 32.9 percent), 261,000 in men 35-49 (up 0.4 percent) and 106,000in women 35-49 (down 15.9 percent). As compared to last year, and while these numbers for NXT and AEW will look really impressive in these comparisons for the next year, because of the changes, they are misleading. However, AEW was up 51.0 percent in viewers, 48.0 percent in 18-49 and 30.8 percent in 18-34. The first quarter with Adam Page vs. Ricky Starks and the post-match did 1,192,000 viewers and 485,000 in 18-49. The second quarter with Penta vs. Trent did 1,124,000 viewers and 476,000 in 18-49. The third quarter with The Pinnacle interview, the Tay Conti-Hikaru Shida video package and the beginning of Shida vs. Conti did 1,099,000 viewers and 476,000 in 18-49. The fourth quarter with Shida vs. Conti, Britt Baker out, Miro promo and the beginning of the Inner Circle promo did 1,174,000 viewers and 512,000 in 18-49. This was the top quarter on the show for both males and females 18-49. The fifth quarter, with the rest of the Inner Circle promo and Billy Gunn vs. QT Marshall did 1,094,000 viewers and 493,000 in 18-49. The sixth quarter with the Elite in the trailer and Jon Moxley & Eddie Kingston showing up and beginning of Christian Cage vs. Powerhouse Hobbs did 1,063,000 viewers and 494,000 in 18-49. The seventh quarter with Christian Cage vs. Hobbs and promoting next week did 1,038,000 viewers and 473,000 in 18-49. The eighth quarter with Darby Allin vs. Jungle Boy for the TNT title did 1,050,000 viewers and 470,000 in 18-49. Now, women usually peak early (last week with Allin vs. Matt Hardy was the major exception) but with women 18-49, this did tie for the lowest mark of the show. Some would think the opposite. It’s not about looks but getting over, which takes time. The show did a 0.12 in 12-17 (down 25.0 percent from last week), 0.17 in 18-34 (down 34.8 percent), 0.57 in 35-49 (down 4.9 percent) and 0.48 in 50+ (down 4.0 percent.

A few more notes on the 4/14 AEW show. The Young Bucks vs. Pac & Fenix match from the start of the intros to the finish of the match averaged 1.22 million viewers and 570,000 in 18-49, and peaked at the finish at 1.30 million viewers and 600,000 in 18-49. Taking out the commercial time, Red Velvet vs. Jade Cargill averaged 1.22 million and 550,000 in 18-49. The peak rating of the show was the end of Chris Jericho vs. Dax Harwood at 1.43 million viewers and 629,000 in 18-49. Kris Statlander vs. Amber Nova peaked at the start with 1.30 million viewers and 626,000 in 18-49. The Christian Cage segment with Team Taz did 1.25 million viewers and 576,000 in 18-49. The ending of Darby Allin vs. Matt Hardy did 1.25 million viewers and 626,000 in 18-49. AEW did 1.53 viewers per home. Actual homes watching AEW increased from 462,000 on 4/7 to 799,000 on 4/14. The key to this is that AEW picked up a ton of NXT homes. Based on a normal week for AEW and NXT, where AEW does better than the unusually low 4/7 show which went against Takeover, AEW got 53 percent of the NXT homes to sample last week’s show. But unlike with NXT, where those 279,000 homes would equal 332,000 total viewers and 105,000 viewers in 18-49, those 279,000 homes had 421,000 viewers and 157,000 in 18-49. So in the homes that were NXT regular homes, 89,000 people total and 52,000 in 18-49 who don’t watch NXT did watch AEW. There were all the second or third viewers in the home, not the first generally older viewer. AEW did skew older due to picking up a large number of over 50 viewers, but not as old as one would have expected, because in those homes they did pick up younger viewers that were new and that you would not have expected. AEW was second among all sports programs for the week in viewers per home behind an MLS game on FOX. It was the third youngest skewing sports show of the week, trailing a Celtics vs. Trailblazers NBA game on Tuesday night and the Robert Whittaker vs. Kelvin Gastelum UFC main card on ESPN. The UFC show is notable for being the second youngest viewing audience for sports this week even though the show ran from 10 p.m. to after 1 a.m.