Wednesday Night Wars: AEW Dynamite vs. WWE NXT
The Wednesday Night Wars was a period of mainstream televised American professional wrestling in which All Elite Wrestling (AEW)'s Dynamite debuted on TNT opposite of WWE's NXT on the USA Network in a competition for Nielsen ratings every week. The ratings war lasted from October 2nd, 2019 until April 7th, 2021.
This was the first time a promotion had directly tried to compete with WWE since Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (also known as Impact Wrestling) briefly moved their flagship program TNA IMPACT! to Monday nights opposite WWE's RAW in 2010, and over 20 years following the original Monday Night Wars that lasted from 1995 until 2001.
AEW would win the ratings battle almost every week in both total viewership and in the viewership from the key 18-49 age demographic, and on April 13th, 2021, WWE NXT moved to Tuesday nights, ending the Wednesday Night Wars.
History:
2000s-2010s: Post-Monday Night Wars:
After the "Monday Night Wars", with the bankruptcy and subsequent acquisitions of both World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), WWE became the dominant professional wrestling company in the United States. In 2008, WWE began to take a family-friendly approach, in which all of it's programming received a rating of TV-PG. Due to this change in their programming, the use of blood was no longer allowed due to health concerns and vulgarity and sexual overtones were no longer allowed.
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| TNA IMPACT!'s first Monday Night episode took place on January 4th, 2010 and saw the debut of Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and the return of Jeff Hardy to TNA. WWE's RAW featured the return of Bret Hart after not appearing in a WWE ring since Survivor Series 1997. |
In 2010, TNA Wrestling (also known as Impact Wrestling), which targets more of an adult audience, would move their flagship weekly television series, TNA IMPACT!, to Monday nights on Spike TV directly opposite WWE's Monday Night RAW from January to May 2010. IMPACT suffered from low ratings and ultimately returned to their regular Thursday night timeslot on May 13th, 2010.
The move itself was panned by critics and viewers. In the 10th anniversary reprint of R.D. Reynolds and Bryan Alvarez's "Death of WCW" book, the authors compared the move to the original Monday Night Wars, writing that TNA did not have the audience that WCW did, pointing out that WCW Saturday Night typically did better than WWE shows did in the weekend timeslots. Reynolds and Alvarez also wrote that TNA did not have the financial resources that WCW did.
2012: WWE NXT's Revamp:
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| The new WWE NXT under Triple H's leadership took an approach much like a Ring of Honor-esque indy federation, with a bigger budget. Such independent standouts as Kevin Steen (Owens), El Generico (Sami Zayn) and Tyler Black (Seth Rollins) would take over the scene as a new generation of WWE stars was being prepared. |
In 2012, WWE NXT was revamped from a hybrid of a reality show / scripted live event show to focus exclusively on it's developmental talent, with Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) (WWE's former developmental territory) being relaunched under the WWE NXT brand. WWE NXT became a webcast on WWE's official website, before later airing on Hulu and the WWE Network. During this period, Triple H was in charge of NXT running the show.
In the years since it's revamp, WWE NXT garnered critical acclaim for its more grounded storylines and sports-based presentation compared to WWE's "main roster" brands, WWE RAW and WWE SmackDown. Fans and pundits eventually viewed the brand as it's own distinct entity and its WWE NXT TakeOver specials to be superior in quality to WWE's monthly pay-per-views.
2018-2019: The Formation of All Elite Wrestling:
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| Want to change the world? If you are Dave Meltzer, just send a tweet! No seriously though, The Elite set out in 2018 to change the face of professional wrestling! Thanks Dave! |
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| Some of the earliest faces of the promotion along with its first AEW World Champion, Le Champion - Chris Jericho! |
10 days before Double or Nothing was held, AEW reached a major deal with television broadcasting conglomerate WarnerMedia to broadcast a weekly television program to air on the TNT network, which would later become known as AEW Dynamite. On July 24th, 2019, AEW announced that Dynamite would make it's debut on Wednesday, October 2nd, 2019 and would be broadcast live every week. The premiere of AEW Dynamite marked the return of professional wrestling to a Warner-owned network after TNT broadcast the final episode of WCW Monday Nitro on March 26th, 2001. AEW has been described as "the first major promotion to compete financially with WWE since the closure of WCW."
2019: WWE NXT Moves to USA Network:
In August of 2019, in response to the debut of AEW Dynamite, WWE announced that WWE NXT would be moving to the USA Network, marking the show's first broadcast on the network since December 20th, 2017, and expanded the program to a live, two-hour format. Critics felt that the move was an attempt to counterprogram Dynamite, which would premiere two weeks later. WWE NXT premiered on USA on September 18th, 2019. However, due to scheduling overlaps with the final episodes of the USA Network original series Suits, only the first hour of WWE NXT would be broadcast on USA for its first two weeks while the second hour was broadcast on the WWE Network. In its first two weeks, WWE NXT drew 1.179 and 1.006 million viewers respectively.
Wednesday Night Wars Begins
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2019: The Debut of AEW Dynamite on TNT:
On October 2nd, 2019, AEW Dynamite debuted on TNT, which averaged 1.409 million viewers and approximately 878,000 viewers in the 18-49 age demographic. This number was touted by TNT as the most successful premiere show in over 5 years for the network. According to Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the first 15 minutes of AEW Dynamite was watched by a whopping 1.625 million viewers and 1.015 million in the 18-49 age demo. WWE NXT made their full two-hour debut on USA Network on the same night, which averaged 891,000 viewers and 415,000 in the 18-49 age demo. AEW's Dynamite beat WWE's NXT in the ratings among both viewers in the 18-49 range and total viewers for its first 7 episodes. WWE NXT began to gain ground when WWE announced that the brand's wrestlers would compete at that year's WWE Survivor Series, officially endorsing WWE NXT as WWE's "third brand". Competitors from the WWE NXT brand went on to win 3 of the 5 triple threat matches at the pay-per-view, which saw WWE NXT Women's Champion Shayna Baszler defeat WWE RAW Women's Champion Becky Lynch and WWE SmackDown Women's Champion Bayley in the main event. These developments helped WWE NXT to place first in the ratings for 3 out of the remaining 6 weeks of 2019, which culminated in a match where Rhea Ripley defeated Shayna Baszler to win the WWE NXT Women's Championship on the December 18th episode. WWE NXT ran unopposed on December 25th, the final Wednesday of 2019, as AEW Dynamite did not air due to Christmas Day.
2020: Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic:
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| While many wrestling promotions had a rough time during the COVID-19 pandemic era, AEW flourished and arguably had some of it's finest moments happen during the empty arena era. |
Both WWE NXT and AEW Dynamite began broadcasting their shows from empty arenas in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both shows stopped touring and started broadcasting from fixed venues. WWE NXT was broadcast initially from Full Sail University and later, from October 2020, the WWE Performance Center. AEW Dynamite was initially aired from Daily's Place, an ampitheater adjacent to TIAA Bank Field. AEW later taped a couple shows at the Nightmare Factory training facility in Norcross, Georgia, in late March and early April, taping up to 6 weeks of episodes preparing for that year's AEW Double or Nothing pay-per-view. As live sports were allowed to resume in the Jacksonville, Florida area by early May, AEW made it's return to Daily's Place and that would become the temporary home base of AEW for over a year. For the 18 months head to head Dynamite would defeat NXT in mostly every demographic viewers range. During the latter half of 2020 NXT's P18-49 (which networks and advertisers prioritise) began to weaken while Dynamite's was only increasing, which would lead to some talks between USA and WWE about NXT being moved to a different night.
2021: WWE NXT Moves to Tuesday Night and the Wednesday Night Wars End:
On March 30th, 2021, it was reported that WWE NXT would move from Wednesday to Tuesday nights beginning on April 13th, 2021. In January, USA Network's parent company, NBCUniversal, announced it would shut down NBC Sports Network by the end of the year, with certain sports programming rights being moved to the USA Network and their streaming service Peacock. WWE confirmed the move to Tuesday night's when announcing a multi-year agreement. The move to Tuesday nights brought an end to the Wednesday Night Wars.
Following the end of the Wednesday Night Wars, both programs benefitted in the Nielsen ratings without the direct competition. WWE NXT's April 13th episode averaged 805,000 viewers with a 0.22 rating in the 18-49 age demographic. This viewership number was an increase from the 768,000 viewers who tuned into night one of WWE NXT's special TakeOver: Stand and Deliver the previous Wednesday. The next day, Dynamite drew over 1.219 million viewers to TNT, up 77% from the prior week's 688,000 almost doubling Total Viewers. This was Dynamite's best viewership number since it's debut episode on October 2nd, 2019. AEW also placed 2nd that evening in the Cable's Top 150 with a 0/44 rating in the 18-49 age demographic, their best key demographic rating since the October 23rd, 2019 episode of Dynamite.
Comparisons Between AEW's Dynamite and WWE's NXT Shows:
Viewership Ratings:
| Date | WWE NXT | AEW Dynamite |
|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-02 | 891,000 | 1,409,000 |
| 2019-10-09 | 790,000 | 1,140,000 |
| 2020-09-09 | Not aired | 1,016,000 |
| 2019-10-16 | 712,000 | 1,014,000 |
| 2020-12-09 | 659,000 | 995,000 |
| 2020-12-30 | 586,000 | 977,000 |
| 2020-01-01 | 548,000 | 967,000 |
| 2019-10-23 | 698,000 | 963,000 |
| 2019-11-13 | 750,000 | 957,000 |
| 2020-01-08 | 721,000 | 947,000 |
| 2020-01-15 | 700,000 | 940,000 |
| 2021-03-03 | 692,000 | 934,000 |
| 2020-03-18 | 542,000 | 932,000 |
| 2020-02-05 | 770,000 | 928,000 |
| 2020-09-02 | Not aired | 928,000 |
| 2020-12-02 | 658,000 | 913,000 |
| 2020-03-04 | 718,000 | 906,000 |
| 2020-08-05 | 753,000 | 901,000 |
| 2019-11-20 | 916,000 | 893,000 |
| 2020-02-19 | 794,000 | 893,000 |
| 2020-09-16 | 689,000 | 886,000 |
| 2020-01-22 | 769,000 | 871,000 |
| 2020-09-30 | 732,000 | 866,000 |
| 2020-02-26 | 717,000 | 865,000 |
| 2021-01-20 | 659,000 | 854,000 |
| 2019-12-04 | 845,000 | 851,000 |
| 2020-11-18 | 638,000 | 850,000 |
| 2020-07-22 | 615,000 | 845,000 |
| 2021-02-03 | 610,000 | 844,000 |
| 2020-09-23 | 696,000 | 835,000 |
| 2021-02-24 | 734,000 | 831,000 |
| 2020-01-29 | 712,000 | 828,000 |
| 2020-05-27 | 731,000 | 827,000 |
| 2020-10-14 | 651,000 | 826,000 |
| 2020-11-06 | 813,000 | 822,000 |
| 2020-03-25 | 669,000 | 819,000 |
| 2020-02-12 | 757,000 | 817,000 |
| 2020-12-16 | 766,000 | 806,000 |
| 2020-08-12 | 619,000 | 792,000 |
| 2020-07-15 | 631,000 | 788,000 |
| 2020-10-28 | 876,000 | 781,000 |
| 2019-12-11 | 778,000 | 778,000 |
| 2020-12-23 | 698,000 | 775,000 |
| 2020-07-29 | 707,000 | 773,000 |
| 2020-06-17 | 746,000 | 772,000 |
| 2021-03-17 | 597,000 | 768,000 |
| 2020-03-11 | 697,000 | 766,000 |
| 2020-11-11 | 632,000 | 764,000 |
| 2021-01-13 | 551,000 | 762,000 |
| 2019-10-30 | 580,000 | 759,000 |
| 2021-03-24 | 678,000 | 757,000 |
| 2020-10-07 | 639,000 | 753,000 |
| 2020-10-21 | 644,000 | 753,000 |
| 2020-07-01 | 792,000 | 748,000 |
| 2021-02-17 | 713,000 | 747,000 |
| 2021-03-10 | 691,000 | 743,000 |
| 2021-02-10 | 558,000 | 741,000 |
| 2021-01-27 | 720,000 | 734,000 |
| 2020-05-06 | 663,000 | 732,000 |
| 2020-04-22 | 665,000 | 731,000 |
| 2020-06-03 | 715,000 | 730,000 |
| 2020-11-04 | 610,000 | 717,000 |
| 2020-07-08 | 759,000 | 715,000 |
| 2020-11-25 | 712,000 | 712,000 |
| 2020-05-20 | 592,000 | 701,000 |
| 2021-03-31 | 654,000 | 700,000 |
| 2020-04-29 | 637,000 | 693,000 |
| 2020-04-08 | 693,000 | 692,000 |
| 2021-04-07 | 768,000 | 688,000 |
| 2020-04-01 | 590,000 | 685,000 |
| 2019-12-18 | 795,000 | 683,000 |
| 2020-04-15 | 692,000 | 683,000 |
| 2020-06-10 | 673,000 | 677,000 |
| 2019-11-27 | 810,000 | 663,000 |
| 2021-01-06 | 641,000 | 662,000 |
| 2020-05-13 | 604,000 | 654,000 |
| 2020-06-24 | 786,000 | 633,000 |
| 2019-12-25 | 831,000 | Not aired |
| 2020-08-19 | 853,000 | Not aired |
| 2020-08-26 | 824,000 | Not aired |
NXT win | Dynamite win | Tie |
Program ran unopposed | ||
| Overall score AEW Dynamite: 63 WWE NXT: 10 Tie: 2 Ratings unavailable or program not aired: 5 | ||
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