While the viewership numbers for AEW Dynamite aren’t as strong as they could be, the show does very well for its night. That’s good for TBS as AEW Dynamite tends to to rank as the network’s top show, landing in the top three or five shows weekly on Wednesday nights.
Tony Khan Discusses Warner Brothers Discovery’s Confidence in AEW
Now, that could just be an indication of how weak of a night Wednesday is for television. Dynamite often hovers between the third or fourth slot but has slipped into second place with a lower-than-usual viewership.
I bring up the viewership because for some time it has been an issue with AEW. A show’s performance via TV ratings is a product of the Monday Night Wars when it mattered the most. Now with WWE having dominated television wrestling for over two decades, TV ratings and viewership isn’t as important as it was since there’s no direct competition on its nights.
If anything, TV viewership can be used to gauge a company’s relationship with the network. If the viewership is extremely low, that might be an indication that the network is about to dump the network—or at least move the show to a different time slot and/or day. Good numbers tend to point toward an interest in renewing broadcasting contracts and might even get a promotion to another hour or another show.
Of course, there are exceptions such as ECW on TNN, a show that performed extremely well considering the native content on TNN and the viewership for those programs. That’s not the case for Tony Khan and AEW. The company did well enough to score a one-hour show in AEW Rampage in 2021. Now the company has landed a second two-hour show in AEW Collision.
In speaking with John Pollack and Brandon Thurston of POST Wrestling and Wrestlenomics Tony Khan went into WB Discovery’s relationship with the Jacksonville-based company. One thing that was brought up was news of WWE and WB Discovery potentially discussing TV rights. On that, Khan said that WBD wasn’t exclusive to AEW.
About WBD CEO David Zaslav, Tony Khan said:
“I really believe David Zaslav is a very, very strong supporter of AEW. When he came in and said ‘I want two more hours of AEW on Saturday nights,’ that was one of the biggest votes of confidence that you could give us. And it was certainly very favorable for us to hear that he wanted that, and then to be able to deliver in very quick turnaround, and put together what I think is going to be a great, great show, with ‘AEW Collision’ every Saturday night.” (h/t: Wrestle Inc)
AEW Collision airs June 17, 2023 on TNT and is riding on the return of CM Punk from an injury that took him out of action for several months.
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