How AEW's Numbers OBJECTIVELY Prove Its Success
The early take was that NXT featured the more consistently good wrestling, whereas AEW peaked higher in the ring, and boasted the better atmosphere, promos and storyline development. Over time, the narrative changed. NXT has become so dry that it's barely worth discussing; at time of writing, 1,510 tweets have included the term 'AEW'. For 'NXT', the number stands at 610. Over on r/SquaredCircle, the Dynamite post-show thread has been commented on 587 times. For NXT, the number is 180. The homepage is dominated by discussion of individual Dynamite moments. Yes, AEW presented a loaded, special edition. But this is consistent with NXT's vanishing.
The Wednesday Night War is all but over.
That's if Wednesdays can even be referred to as a war in October 2020. It isn't. AEW has proved itself, rather decisively, the winner. Viewed through the lens of a pro wrestling analyst, AEW has decimated NXT and is making gains in key demos on Monday Night RAW. But away from that, AEW in part secured that rights fee because it is a major success as measured by TNT - not least because it emphatically out-performed the existing 8/7 Central Wednesday time slot.
The October 2, 2020 opening night generated TNT's biggest original programming premiere in five years by securing 1.4 million overall viewers. No week since has approached that number, but none have needed to when one considers the original projections with which TNT were to measure the success of the show. The best-case scenario saw AEW Dynamite generate 500,000 total viewers, and AEW Dynamite has recorded that number 0 times. The closest figure to that - i.e. Dynamite's lowest overall - was 654,000 on May 13, 2020.
About a billion words have been written about the lightning rod that is AEW.
The numbers render most of them meaningless.