The stars and fans of All Elite Wrestling were in a celebratory mood on October 1 as AEW celebrated the sixth anniversary of its flagship show "AEW Dynamite" at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. Kyle Fletcher successfully retained his AEW TNT Championship against Orange Cassidy, both Hangman Adam Page and Kris Statlander found out their opponents for the upcoming WrestleDream pay-per-view, and after being let go from WWE for various disciplinary reasons, Andrade El Idolo made his return to the company by attacking Kenny Omega and joining The Don Callis Family.
What the company won't be celebrating is the recent TV ratings, something that has caused quite the stir in the wrestling business over the past few days. According to Wrestlenomics and The Programming Insider, the sixth anniversary edition of "Dynamite" averaged a total of 465,000 viewers, a steep drop from the 635,000 viewers the September 24 episode averaged, and the lowest viewership "Dynamite"has earned in its regular timeslot. It was even worse in the 18-49 demographic, as the show only posted a 0.09 number, down from the number 0.14 posted a week earlier, meaning that "Dynamite"placed sixth for the evening in the prime time cable telecast rankings. As always, these numbers don't include those who streamed the show live on HBO MAX.
The reason why the TV ratings have been a hot topic of discussion this week is due to Nielsen changing the way that TV ratings are measured. Nielsen recently announced that they will now be measuring how many people watched a show by using a method called "Big Data + Panel," as opposed to just using "Panel" data, which took a sample of households from around the country. This new method will now include the people who watched on Smart TVs and set-top boxes, as well as those who still watch through their traditional providers. Wrestlenomics originally anticipated ratings for many shows to rise, but for wrestling shows over the past week, ratings have sharply declined, with "AEW Collision,""WWE SmackDown" and "WWE NXT" also seeing big drops in viewership.
