Ratings Talk Ruins It For Me

[toodarkmark]

I know it shouldn't, but man it does. It really is meaningless, but there's just so much obsession with AEW failing, and it's like ravenous dogs when NXT beat them that week. I stopped paying attention, and boy was the Jan 1 episode fun for me. I just enjoy it so much when there isn't this non-stop barrage of negativity dealing with ratings, when we already know it doubles what TNT expected, and the plus 7 days thing usually makes everyone happy.

I know that was the purpose of putting NXT against them, even if some people argue otherwise, and it kind of works. Because even when AEW was winning, it's muddied. Like, people don't mention AEW by itself, it's now married to NXT. And for those of us who could care less about NXT, it's beyond annoying. The ratings are more important then this content which is super enjoyable. And then forget about it, if they have an annoying angle of some sort, the world is collapsing. Like, most of the time, their stuff is good. There's nothing that can be done, and people will probably make fun of me, but I want to vent.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

Can't agree more. I was really hoping to enjoy AEW in isolation as much as possible. Like, at the height of my ROH fandom, I invested by making ROH My Wrestling. AEW has all the qualities that I want out of a promotion that I can invest in - a focus on the live entertainment aspects of wrestling, wrestlers who bring their gimmick to the ring, individual character arcs. It works as my only wrestling show for the time being.

And then all of the conversation turns into endless over-analyzing of the one or two things that didn't work because they lost to NXT, and I'm begging for the next episode to come around just to remind myself what I am enjoying.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

I try to ignore it and hope the people at AEW don't fixate on it, as pursuing ratings rather than sustainable growth killed TNA and did WCW no favours during the monday night wars.

[111111]

If what other people were saying about a programme affected my enjoyment of it that much then I would take every step to avoid reading said opinions and just enjoy the show on my own terms.

Like literally everything you're ever going to enjoy as a fan there are going to be conversations around it that might not be to your liking, the only thing you can do is not focus on it and seek out the discussions that aren't about ratings and block out anything that is.

I don't really come across constant talk about AEW ratings other than in ratings threads but perhaps I'm not on here enough to really see that elsewhere.

[Cyno]

The ratings talk are just dickwagging contests for wrestling fans. I don't know what sort of expectations USA had for NXT, but TNT's expectations for AEW Dynamite have been exceeded even in their worst week. The networks only really care about 18-49 numbers (for advertising purposes), and total viewership numbers become more and more meaningless when there's so many other ways to watch something besides live broadcasts.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

In the end it's beneficial for AEW but just know no matter what happens this company is on cable for three years and is fully funded for five. They're ok.

[salz4life]

I want both AEW and NXT to do well. To me, they are the only two consistantly good wrestling shows on TV, IMO. I haven't had the time to invest in Impact and I've heard good things, but I can't add them since I haven't watched it. Overall I'm enjoying AEW and have always enjoyed NXT so I'm happy.