You can’t base anything off the debut number. People just tuned in for the sake of curiosity. Same with SmackDown’s number for its Fox debut.
Why are you comparing the debut number to anything? 
It doesn’t really matter if you think the number isn’t any good - the network is thrilled to pay so little (compared to WWE) to get a consistent top 10 show. It’s pretty rare for that to happen.
Growth will come
I absolutely can. It shows people were interested enough to see what it was about and decided it wasn’t good enough to watch again. Had it been good enough they would have continued to tune it. It is really quite simple:
Entertaining = I want to watch this again.
Not entertaining = I don’t want to watch this again.
Make all the excuses you want and find reasons to justify to yourself what are cold hard facts are not, but in coming up for a year their audience has shrank rather than grown and I see nothing to say that will change.
Yeah… I’m not making excuses. I don’t give a shit about AEW. I don’t think it’s that different to main roster WWE. I’m just saying that you can’t look at the debut number being a result of how people would regular choose to view a show. It was the first episode, a one time thing where it had a massive curiosity factor.
And to put to bed this excuse of how people consume content now is the reason for the lack of viewers, look at the NFL numbers over the last decade.
Despite a small decline they bottomed out in 2017/18 and have reversed the decline.
So would you tune in to watch something that you knew you had no interest in and no intention of watching again if you enjoyed it?
The NFL is a juggernaut. Ridiculous to compare it to a start up wrestling company.
Not only that, you compare a 10 year window for the NFL with 11 months of that start up promotion. Just stick to your stuff in the 80s
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It isn’t ridiculous just because it undermines your weak excuses. You just stick your head in the sand and keep convincing yourself this shite that is being presented isn’t contributing to the decline in the popularity of wrestling and that, in the face of all facts, AEW is the saviour of wrestling.
I’m not going to make an argument that there isn’t a decline in wrestling viewership there absolutely is. However, I think part of that is that you can get the kind of fix many went to wrestling for in other media way more than you could have in the late 90s early 2000s. Further to use the debut as the watermark for the rating is dumb. That assumes that there exists a product that all those who turned in would have been happy with. There was always going to be a tune out of some viewers that wanted one thing and didn’t get that thing. We can argue that one style might have had higher return, but in the end that is speculation.
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I think everyone gets it - you don’t like AEW. But to say anything other than their numbers are successful is completely ignorant.
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No, it is a fact. To say their numbers are successful is to have low standards and expectations.
Top ten in cable and many times top five is not low expectations at all. In today’s TV market, which is what we’re talking about (not 1980,1990,2000,2010), those are great numbers.
They are performing at a higher level than the cable company initially predicted. Total success
Lol the numbers are what they are. Silly to argue why they aren’t the same as they were 20 years ago.
THIS.
At the end of the day, the only person’s opinion on the ratings that truly matters is Mr./Mrs. Time Warner. And by all accounts, the network seems to be happy with AEW’s ratings. Could they be better? It’s possible…But I think them hitting a million a couple weeks ago is a clear sign that interest is there, and they’ve done of good job of maintaining that core audience of about 850K, and at times outperforming that core audience…
To qualify that as “unsuccessful” is a tad bit disingenuous (to put it kindly…Lol!).
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Have you actually read my posts? I’m not saying I expect them to be the same as they were 20 years ago. I am saying that blaming the numbers they are getting on changes in how people consume content is bullshit as the percentage drop in wrestling viewership is not even close to the overall percentage drop in other categories and that good content can buck the trend.
AEW numbers have been pretty consistent. Not sure what you’re going on about.
WWE - yes they are declining but RAW and SD still have good numbers as well. Wrestling still gets an audience
The way I see it Nate is that if AEW were that confident in their product they wouldn’t have rushed to sign an extension for what amounts to be roughly 10% of what WWE is getting paid by USA Network for Raw and Fox for Smackdown.
Don’t be dumb.
That deal made them literally the second most successful wrestling company in the world, in the last 20+ years.
They got an incredible deal based off three months of TV. This is an incredible silly statement.
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It’s simple - WWE got a bloated price tag because they made network execs believe they’re the only game in town.
All of a sudden AEW comes along and does basically as well for much, much lower. All in less than a year.
I don’t begrudge them for signing that deal at all - it most importantly gives them stability, which is what was needed for the company right now.
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