SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Last night’s (10/16) AEW Dynamite drew 1.014 million viewers, down from the 1.140 million viewers last week. NXT on USA drew 712,000 viewers, which was down from 790,000 last week.
AEW Week One: 1.409 million viewers
AEW Week Two: 1.140 million viewers (1.018 million viewers on TNT + 122,000 on Tru)
More details to come later.
NXT is a minor league product – we all understand that. AEW? I know you WANT it to work. But they are, like so many failed before them, trying to be WWE lite rather than something unique. Jericho is fine but, eh, you really think he’s must see TV for the general audience week after week in 2019? Me neither. And Cody Rhodes? Great name. Loved his father. Guy could be a good role player. But he’s not a franchise player and he’s booking himself into that. Sorry, AEW doesn’t even have the legs of TNA.
NXT is a great show that has no names. Hardcore wrestling fans will watch while the casuals on whom you can’t really build anything anyway, won’t.
AEW is not going to do better than WWE simply because they offer nothing new or anything of real “mainstream” value. If you’re a casual, why watch AEW instead of WWE, which has superb brand recognition value with a history of almost 40 years? Casuals probably don’t even know what the heck a AEW is. Hardcore fans or a subsection thereof may watch but that won’t form the foundation of success.
Cody Rhodes? Sorry, i don’t care what some wrestling insiders say, he is still as boring to me as he was in WWE. Kenny Omega has yet to show anything remarkable outside of Japan. Young Bucks? Who cares, really? Chris Jericho was a B-tier sometimes main eventer even at the peak of his career, playing second fiddle to Triple H, Austin, Rock, Angle, Cena, Undertaker etc etc. He’s supposed to be something special now that he’s old and flabby?