Wednesday Night Wars 06/10/2020 Ratings

Although Dynamite won in the ratings last week, the difference in the audience size between the AEW show and NXT was a mere 2.1%. So for this week, we figured that either Dynamite will regain a larger lead or NXT will finally stop Dynamite's winning streak after seven weeks in a row. Strangely enough, neither occurred. Instead, Dynamite won this week with an even smaller margin. This time, the difference in the audience size was a minuscule 0.6%. Here are the details.

• Dynamite's viewership fell significantly again this week. The audience size fell 7.3%, dropping from 730,000 viewers last week to 677,000 viewers this week. The show's 18-49 demographics rating took an even bigger tumble. It fell from 0.29 last week way down to 0.23 this week.

• NXT also lost ground in the ratings compared to last week. Its audience shrank from 715,000 viewers last week to 673,000 viewers this week. Although the drop wasn't as large as Dynamite's, that's still a notable decrease of 5.9%. And like Dynamite, NXT saw a big decreased in its 18-49 demographics rating. It fell from 0.20 last week to 0.16 this week.

Although both Dynamite and NXT presented decent episodes this week, neither show featured anything particularly exciting. The AEW matches featuring FTR and Colt Bobana set up interest storylines, and the women's tag team match clearly showed that the AEW women's division is improving. However, the TNT Championship match between Cody and Marq Quen turned out to be very similar to last week's match between Cody and Jungle Boy. So it ended up a little flat. Similarly, NXT did a nice job of setting up a few new storylines after Sunday's Takeover event. It was interesting to see what was next for Adam Cole now that Velveteen Dream is out of the picture as well as Io Shirai's reaction after her controversial championship win. But overall, there just weren't anything especially captivating.

For the second week in a row, the ratings for both shows took a hit. (See graph above.) As always, NXT seems to have more of a die-hard fan base, so any drop in the ratings it experiences are usually not as steep as Dynamite's. With that being the case, NXT is slowly gaining ground against the AEW show. So AEW needs to do something to stand out again. After all, Dynamite debuted to more than 1.4 million viewers, so people do know it's out there. AEW seems to recognize this and is trying something new with Fyter Fest. Instead of being a pay-per-view event like it previous was, AEW is presenting Fyter Fest as two special episodes of Dynamite at the beginning of July. This is a smart move on AEW's part, but there is no gurantee that it will have any lasting effects nowadays. Until fans are allowed back into arenas, it is very difficult for either promotion to build any momentum. However, it will definitely be interesting to see the ratings for Dynamite and NXT over those two weeks.

As for Raw and Smackdown this week, Raw's ratings pretty much held steady while Smackdown's saw a huge drop.

• This week's Raw pretty much had the same number of viewers as last week. The audience size did increase, but it was by an insignificant 0.5% as it grew from 1,728,000 viewers to 1,737,333 viewers. The change in the show's 18-49 demographics rating was more significant, however. It went up from 0.49 last week to 0.53 this week.

• Smackdown mysteriously saw a big bump in viewership last week. But this week, it lost all those additional viewers and then some. The size of the audience dropped from 2,170,000 viewers last week to 1,984,000 viewers this week. This a drop of 8.6%. The show's 18-29 demographics rating correspondingly decreased, falling from 0.6 last week to 0.5 this week.

So, Dynamite won the Wednesday Night Wars again this week, but only by a mere 4,000 viewers. It's hard to imagine the margin between Dynammite and NXT being any closer, but there was one week where the two shows actually tied in viewership. So anything is possible. The win-loss record for Dynamite now stands at 30-5-1 for viewership and 35-1 for the 18-49 demographic. NXT's record is now 5-30-1 for viewership and 1-35 for the 18-49 demographic. This week's results extends Dynamite's winning streak to eight weeks in a row.