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Here are some interesting numbers for last night’s Dynamite, courtesy of the good folks over at WrestleNomics.com.
Last night’s 747,000 overnight viewers were Dynamite’s lowest since April 7, 2021.
The 0.23 that they did in the 18-49 demo (the number Chris Jericho took has is own many years, was their lowest since June 24, 2020.
So, it’s been almost three years since they did an audience that low and almost four since they did that poorly in the demo.
Wrestlenomics also noted Dynamite ranked #3 for the day on cable in P18-49 demo, behind the NBA games on ESPN.
The show started with 939,000 viewers and immediately dropped to 802,000 for quarter two. That’s a 15% drop. And, that quarter hour was the second quarter hour of the night.
In doing a little math of my own, here’s something I found very, very interesting. The 2/28 show, leading into Sting’s last match, did 822,000 viewers and a 0.29 in the demo. After that show, AEW’s Big 3 signings of Kazuchika Okada, Will Ospreay and Mercedes Mone began to roll out. We even had a “new season” to start it all off! So what happened?
The four shows in March did an average of 781,000 viewers and a 0.26 in the demo. To all of the wonderful products of incest that troll my twitter account and share their grade school wisdom with me, that isn’t good. It’s bad.
As noted in the past, Ospreay’s first match against Kyle Fletcher did the lowest quarter hour of the evening. Last night, his match opened the show and 137,000 viewers changed channels before it ended. Okada did an angle last night in the third quarter hour and that drew 711,000 viewers, down 11% from the people who stayed for Will’s finish. Thus far, Mone hasn’t moved the needle either. So they are all to blame for the drop this month, right?
Wrong!
Okada is one of the best wrestlers in the world. Ospreay is on his way to being mentioned in that conversation by people who actually understand the business as well. Mone is Mone. They all didn’t suddenly stink because they came to AEW. They are not delivering because the man who books them, Tony Khan, chose to believe that an extremely unqualified, and often inaccurate, sheetwriter’s view of the the wrestling business is what appealed to the masses. He was fed a bill of goods by that non-blood uncle and he has built his promotion around what someone who has no clue about what sells to the masses thinks pro wrestling is and should be. That would be like asking me my opinion on how do to open heart surgery.
It’s crystal clear now that what Tony’s Uncle thinks the masses want isn’t even in the ballpark, not even close. What people like that flawed sheet writer likes appeals to a small, rabid, vocal percentage of wrestling fandom. And, they amount to about 1/3 of the people who watch Smackdown. Hell, if you look at last night’s number, it’s almost half of the number that give Dynamite a watch when it debuted.
Som it’s not like there aren’t fans out that would watch AEW if it wasn’t so…..well….dirtsheety, but it is. We see the same pattern every week. Thanks in part to its lead in, the first quarter is the best of the night and it goes downhill from there. Tony is supposed to understand analytics. If he actually did, he would see that’s a huge problem and his whole focus should be to fix that. Instead, he listens to excuses his uncle makes about the product. When fair, sane reporters say that the storylines in AEW aren’t good, there’s his uncle tweeting how great they are. So Tony could listen to the data, or listen to an out of touch senior citizen. He chooses the latter. Brilliant!
As anyone reading this knows, there was a period of a year or so where AEW was my favorite of the weekly shows. I loved Dynamite. I enjoyed the stories and the motivations of the wrestlers. I gladly spend $50 to buy the PPVs because I enjoyed the product so much and I wanted to see it succeed.
Those days are long gone because Tony Khan backed away from appealing to fans, like me, who like to know who the characters are and why they are fighting and doubled down on trying to satiate his hack writer Uncle who make statements like Willow and Mone is a “great storyline” because “we all know what happened between them in Japan”.
Uh no, we all don’t.
Some of want the stories explained to us. Some of us don’t pay attention to what happens in Japan…or Portugal….or the Isle Of Malta (props to the Baron).
We don’t genuflect to a false idol or sit in a circle with a bunch of similar people fantasizing about how many big moves talents can do, and then not sell a bit. It’s AEW’s job to explain who the people are and why they are fighting. Tony Khan does a putrid job of that. If he wants to turn things around, fixing the problem with his bad creative is the first step. Ignoring his Uncle’s feedback, which is killing his product, would be a close second.
I don't care what anyone tries to sell, I see no way that this company is even close to profitable right now. Khan can keep it going as long as he wants to spend money (or his dad lets him). But the goal should be to grow the company and make it part of the Khan portfolio, not a vanity business. I mean, Tony should be able to get to live his dream of being a booker AND also put out a quality, financally successful product. It's up to him to actually do it.
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