According to the fast nationals, SmackDown got 2.1 million versus Rampage’s 511k. The Saturday encore edition of SmackDown got 656k. So the SmackDown replay did better than Rampage’s first run.

Last week’s SmackDown, when adding in New York and Chicago numbers, actually got around 955k.

Yeah, but what about the demos bro??? :rofl:

Yeah, like in every interview, podcast, or tweet made by Tony Khan and his living toy wrestlers!!! :rofl:

Also, here is a second :rofl: just to ensure everybody recognizes that this reply is a joke, meant for chuckles, and NOT that I am angry or leaving out context. #loveyafan

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">🚨SATURDAY FAST NATIONALS JUST DROPPED*🚨<br>*Source: The Streets of Inglewood, Calif. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SmackDown?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SmackDown</a> Rerun <br>578K <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEWDynamite?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEWDynamite</a> <br>515K <br><br>Demos Are Not Available. Take from that what you will 😉<br><br>The Streets Have Spoken. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/WWE?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#WWE</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AEW?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AEW</a></p>&mdash; Alfred Konuwa (@ThisIsNasty) <a href="https://twitter.com/ThisIsNasty/status/1452637050428030985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 25, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Can't WAIT for how Tony and Dave are going to try and spin this one as a win :rofl::lol:

Holy shit @ a SmackDown replay beating Dynamite.

Stiff baseball competition coming up for Anything Else next week too, I hear.

Dave is going to emphasise the gulf between TNT and FOX, and try to use SmackDown replays beating Dynamite as evidence SmackDown actually does horrible numbers on Friday. He will try to make TNT and Fox Sports 1 the actual measure people should use.

AEW fans: “We don’t care about ratings. Just let us enjoy the show.”

AEW Dynamite: No one enjoys the show enough to watch it.

R.I.P

Lol, TNT has decided to force Dynamite live around the whole US, meaning it’s going to be on at 5pm on the West Coast instead of in an 8-10 slot. TK is on Twitter thanking TNT for being such amazing partners as they go into a slot where most of the demo it loves to crow about are stuck in traffic getting home.

RIP

I honestly wouldnt even care about ratings if Tony Khan and his minions didnt act so smug about them. But they do, and so I enjoy when they fall on their asses and am amused by how they spin a different story week to week to claim some kind victory.

That doesn’t help them. At all. But with me it’s a measure of growth and engagement. It’s not the only metric of that. Younger people are going to engage with content in different ways. And guess what? That’s true of WWE too. It’s why their stuff goes up on YouTube almost immediately. But when people are throwing their hands up in ecstasy claiming this shit to be so much better than whatever else is out there, and I can see so many detrimental things about the product, it makes for great evidence to actually back my opinion up.

This isn’t the recipe for wrestling getting resurrected. You can enjoy it. That’s your prerogative. But don’t tell me it’s objectively good, or objectively effective. Does it work for the converted? Sure. A lot of the time. But popularity isn’t even the point, entirely. I can like niche stuff that a lot of people won’t want to engage with. That’s cool. But there’s a link here between the content being subpar and missing a much larger audience that wants something else entirely. Something I would enjoy. Something missing. The lack of popularity doesn’t only correlate, in my opinion, but is actually causally related to AEW’s output. And I will point it out until something happens, someone gets it, and we have content that works on a more effective level.

This is evidenced by the initial Punk number. By their debut number. By their All Out buyrate. More people want to enjoy wrestling and don’t than just don’t like wrestling anymore. And anything else is a cop-out. And it’s ignoring a segment of fans — potential fans, anyway — that are very clear in what they want, believe it or not. And too many people are ready to applaud intentionality than actual performance. I’m sure AEW wants to be good wrestling. But that doesn’t make them good wrestling. I’m not going to say they are good wrestling until they are.

I know turning a profit doesn't seem to be critical to AEW, but primetime ad rates are much more than middle of the day rates. Not sure why Tony is hyped about this.

Sucking up/spin. You roll with the hand you’re dealt. I mean, you could just keep quiet, but he’s got to push his face into everything.

Standing back and reflecting on the SmackDown replay beating Dynamite, taking out which show sucks more and all that subjective stuff — I think it does spell out an interesting story re: network television and the potential for wrestling promotions to do way more than they have elsewhere on it.

Come TV renegotiations, I think it will be interesting to see where Raw and SmackDown end up, but also whether AEW makes a play for network, and whether cable breaks bank to secure these shows that have potentially much larger audiences.

Taking Raw being awful out of the equation, that it does so well on cable is actually pretty incredible, when you really think about it. If it went to FOX or NBC, it would probably see a pretty sizeable increase in audience. Now, they do have an incumbent one, but I can see other wrestling promotions making real plays to point out that gulf between what Dynamite does on a Saturday against a SmackDown replay, and trying to use that argue their own deals without the capital that Tony Khan had to sign stars and the like.

I don’t know if networks will go for it, or if it’s even true, but there is a dollars and sense story here.

Ultimately, the future is in streaming. That changes the whole game. Then it becomes who can generate content to keep subscriptions viable and possibly expand OTT services into new countries or make them more viable for a sale. But cable and network wanting to remain competitive and look for content means that companies can make a killing off playing the ratings game for a little while longer. Networks might see the value in live entertainment being something they can milk and gain larger audiences than cable can allow, and cable networks might pay a hefty premium to keep or obtain something that could be way more popular on network.

Ultimately, I think this could lead to other wrestling promotions really looking to secure network deals, as unlikely as they may seem, because that could cast a much wider net almost instantly, which can boost all other business metrics — attendance, merchandising, PPV, etc.

For example: ROH could use a network broadcasting deal to really bolster their popularity and their syndication purpose. MLW didn’t exactly pop on Vice, but if they could get a deal with CBS, they could become #2 in sheer popularity almost overnight. In theory.

Impact are breaking off their deal with AEW. Mark Cuban has a lot of money. Whether he starts another thing or tries to get Impact onto network so that AXS can benefit with popularity is an outside possibility.

The true story here, in my opinion, is just how unremarkable cable ratings are compared to network, and how a SmackDown replay can get 550k people over two hours with no original content.

I dunno, I may just be being an optimist here. But more than even just recently I am seeing the huge gap between network television and cable. I see more good news in that than WWE simply being so much more popular than AEW.

The obvious obstacle is first-run wrestling being competitive in those slots with other content. Wrestling has a real problem with that. It’d be ambitious and ballsy, don’t get me wrong. But I hope people have had the idea.

What sort of ratings decrease did Raw see back in the day when they were shunted for the Dog Show? I know it’s not a 1:1 just mildly interested in how transferable the old audience was.

I think they would take a hit, but I’m just going off memory. Not catastrophically huge, I don’t think. But I don’t remember them gaining massively not being against Nitro or anything.

I’m more confident in saying that I seem to recall the unopposed wrestling shows doing better on Monday nights. It would help Raw when Nitro got pre-empted and vice versa.

1.66 million for the 'season premiere' of RAW

I think the real interesting issue will be Fox vs NBC in terms of WWE's future. If NBC is going to make an actual play to own WWE's content (which most analysts see as the only reason NBC paid a $billion for WWE Network to be on Peacock) than they will have to overpay for whatever Smackdown's value is.

NBC is not going to pay $5billion for WWE just to have one of their shows on Fox. Vince certainly would want to be compensated in any NBC deal for the money he could have kept making with Fox.

Another big issue is that WWE Network deal goes for another 2+ years after the Fox Smackdown contract ends. I could see Vince signing a deal with NBC to air Smackdown for those 2 years, so those 2 contracts end around the same time, at which point NBC would make the purchase play. That is still about 4 and a half years away.

The big question then is would Fox want AEW as a replacement? AEW's show as it is today certainly couldnt air on Network TV. Would their hardcore fanbase even watch a more family friendly AEW? I really doubt Fox would want the perception that they lost Smackdown to NBC and replaced it with a bootleg version (which is what people outside of wrestling fans see it as)? Would AEW want to move Dynamite to Friday nights? They certainly aren't getting on any other day, no Wrestling Show is getting on Network TV on any day but Friday or maybe Saturday. Or would Fox rather just not have wrestling on their Network anymore?

Vince is likely to cash out, Shad has to at some point decide AEW needs to start turning a profit, and Tony has to be more professional than getting into Twitter spats with random people if he ever wants the perception of AEW to match WWE's in the business world. For as bad as WWE is, that is a brand that is at least respected in Corporate America.

My guess is NBCUniversal eventually buys WWE and AEW stays put on Time Warner

If NBC did buy out Vince and revamped the creative team I’d be v interested to see what direction they’d take the company in.

Turn the whole thing into a sitcom with special episodes (PPVs) for stories to wrap up via characters finally beating the shit out of each other.

Vegas residency

It would be a sitcom or dramady with some wrestling worked in. Basically soap opera with wrestling.

That is 100% the WWE of tomorrow.

Halloween Havoc did 746k.

Now, a reasonable person would wait to see what AEW did this week, but since AEW fanboys established you can compare shows backwards in time, this means NXT kicked Dynamite’s ass.

941,000 for Dynamite.

Yikes.

R.I.P TNA Xplos....er AEW Dynamite.

That number sounds like Tony is gonna have to call Shad for another advance on his allowance :rofl:

Damn I forgot about Xplosion lol

How come AEW is declining?

Same as RAW, real sports dominating ratings

Poor product

So, either way, same as Raw.

Raw comes in at around a 8.5/10 while AEW comes in at around 4/10. Last time I checked the numbers.

Yeah but everyone knows that x/10 is an out-dated and out-moded measure that doesn’t really capture how people truly feel about things nowadays.

Excuse me sir! My system is a HIGHLY complicated calculation of numbers with pinpoint accuracy.

Tony Khan acting like a spoiled child everytime he talks certainly doesnt help. He is the adult version of "My Daddy could beat up your Daddy".

Hahaha, 941k.

878k for Dynamite this week. Ouch.

For those who care about the demo, it was down 20%. When you take that away from them, what do they have to lean on? Women and older viewers aren’t suddenly going to come along and give them something to brag about.

Not a surprise that less people are engaged after that STUPID angle in the main event last week. Also, this week they had to randomly throw a guy into a tournament instead of giving a guy a bye to the finals because the booking is so shit.