The second week of the Wednesday night wars is complete and All Elite Wrestling (AEW) Dynamite is still clearly ahead in the ratings. AEW’s Dynamite beat World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) NXT with 1.140 million, viewers, compared to NXT’s 790,000 viewers. However, the ratings were down for both shows this week.
The Elite Program
AEW’s Dynamite premiered with 1.4 million viewers. It was the first-ever episode of the show, garnering a lot more interest. AEW is the newest wrestling organization, lead by Cody Rhodes, Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks. They set their organization up to be an alternative to the mainstream WWE organization. However, it seemed that WWE viewed AEW as competition rather than an alternative. When AEW announced their weekly television show Dynamite will start premiering on Wednesdays, a day that had no WWE programming on live television, WWE announced that it’s developmental program NXT will also premiere live on Wednesday. Therefore, setting up a direct competition between the two organizations.
The NXT Big Thing
So far, NXT has failed to reach the AEW’s ratings. NXT first premiered in the United States on September 18, 2019. That’s two weeks before Dynamite was set to premiere. NXT’s first show had 1.179 million viewers, it’s second show had 1.006 million. However, when AEW put its first episode of Dynamite on TNT, NXT’s ratings dropped significantly. NXT had 891,000 compared to AEW’s 1.4 million viewers on October 2.
Viewers are being forced to make a choice. Both shows are on every Wednesday night at 8:00 PM E.T. Therefore, if viewers want to watch the shows live, they can only really pay attention to one at a time. Dynamite and AEW is a whole are new products. Therefore, people tiring of WWE’s old formulaic style of wrestling might entice viewers to switch over to AEW. AEW has set itself up as a distinct, different organization. While fans have been extremely critical of WWE more recently.
Both AEW and NXT are going to war every week. Which side are you on? Let us know in the comments!