Post by Cyno on Jul 14, 2022 19:46:42 GMT -5
Most of the people who did it here were trolls that got banned, to be fair. Well that and when Dynamite and NXT went head to head. Beating the "18-49 matters much more than P2 viewership" drum over and over again when Dynamite did better in the former and NXT the latter wasn't fun.
It's like the people who think Raw went back to TV-14 because of AEW. They don't directly compete against one another with their TV shows. Raw is often the #1 show on Mondays and AEW has a nice streak going with being #1 on Wednesdays. As far as TV ratings go, both shows are doing really well.
It's why I find the whole "wrestling isn't mainstream anymore!" argument and holding current total viewership numbers against late 90's Nitro and Raw as the decisive evidence so tiresome. For a number of reasons:
1. Nothing on cable gets the kind of viewership numbers late 90's wrestling did these days. Hell, barely anything gets the kind of numbers WWE Raw got in 2005. Really just NFL Monday Night Football games and maybe NBA and MLB playoff games. Or the news programs when a huge event happens. The media landscape and how we consume it has changed dramatically in the last 20 years. When we had the Monday Night Wars, DVR was just in its infancy at the tail end of that and the internet relied on dialup modems where even loading a single picture could take a minute or two. The only real way of watching Raw or Nitro stuff was on TV or recording it with a VCR (remember those?). Now? We've got DVR, YouTube, social media, streaming, and so many other ways to consume content. By that standard, nothing is mainstream.
2. Social media engagement for both WWE and AEW is great. Youtube view counts for AEW are great and astounding for WWE.
3. WWE's events by all accounts do really well for Peacock. AEW's PPV buys both through traditional and streaming only go up with each event. Even Forbidden Door, which was considered a niche at most event, shattered internal expectations.
4. Merch sales for both companies are doing as well as ever.
5. Even the whole "No one's like Hogan, Austin, or the Rock" argument doesn't hold a lot of water when guys like John Cena and Dave Bautista are getting a lot of love from Hollywood lately. Granted, this isn't an argument in AEW's favor because they're a brand new company. But as a company, they're featured in a lot of Warner Bros Discovery's cross-platform and company plans and also have some big names as fans like Dwayne Johnson and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Okay, that ended up more long-winded than I originally intended lol. Ultimately, we have two larger domestic companies that are healthy (well, WWE's current Vince McMahon-related issues aside) and a number of smaller companies that are getting by, too. It's a damn good time to be a wrestling fan.