AEW Dynamite & NXT See Drops Due to Election Coverage, Dynamite Back Ahead of NXT

– Showbuzz Daily has the overnight numbers for last night’s Wednesday Night Wars battle between NXT and AEW Dynamite. Of course, this week’s chaotic Presidential Election 2020 coverage dominated the ratings last night, and most eyes were on the cable news coverage for the election, which is still ongoing. As a result, AEW Dynamite and NXT both saw losses in viewership and ratings this week. However, it was AEW Dynamite that declared victory this week after NXT Halloween Havoc managed to claim victory in the overnight viewership with the brand’s Halloween Havoc special.

Last night’s Dynamite broadcast on TNT had the less severe drop-off between the two shows with an overnight audience of 717,000 viewers. Dynamite fell 64,000 viewers from last week’s viewership of 781,000 for the go-home show before Saturday’s Full Gear pay-per-view event.

Meanwhile, NXT numbers plummeted 266,000 viewers this week, finishing with an overnight audience of 610,000 viewers. Between the election coverage and not being able to rely on the brand recognition of a classic WCW pay-per-view event name to draw in additional interest this week, a drop in viewership is not all that surprising here either. The NXT Halloween Havoc special was WWE’s first victory in head-to-head viewership against AEW Dynamite since the Great American Bash Night 2 special on July 8. Overall, this is NXT’s lowest audience this year since May 20’s show drew 592,000 viewers.

In terms of the P18-49 key demo ratings, Dynamite had a slight drop from last week’s 0.31. This week’s Full Gear go-home show finished with a 0.30 rating.

Last week, the NXT Halloween Havoc show drew NXT’s best head-to-head rating against Dynamite since the February 19 show. This week was a different story. Once again, the election coverage caused some damage, and the show fell from a 0.25 rating to a 0.14. This was NXT’s lowest rating in the key demo since the July 15 episode, which drew an identical rating and 631,000 viewers.

With cable news network coverage of the election dominating last night’s ratings and viewership, AEW Dynamite didn’t even make it into the Top 50 of the Cable Top 150 rankings. Dynamite didn’t even make it into the Top 55. Instead, Dynamite fell from its Top 15 rank of No. 12 last week to No. 56 this week. Meanwhile, NXT, after managing to climb all the way up to No. 21 last week, was sent tumbling down to No. 68.

CNN’s 9:00 pm hour coverage of the election topped the key demo ratings for the evening with a 2.37 rating. The broadcast also topped the viewership for the evening with 7.923 million viewers.

Here are the week by week AEW and NXT numbers:

October 2nd: AEW 0.68 demo rating (1.409 million viewers), NXT 0.32 demo rating (891,000 viewers)
October 9th: AEW 0.46 (1.018 million viewers), NXT 0.22 (790,000 viewers)
October 16th: AEW 0.44 (1.014 million viewers), NXT 0.20 (712,000 viewers)
October 23rd: AEW 0.45 (963,000 viewers), NXT 0.21 (698,000 viewers)
October 30th: AEW 0.33 (759,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (580,000 viewers)
November 6th: AEW 0.35 (822,000 viewers), NXT 0.30 (813,000 viewers)
November 13th: AEW 0.43 (957,000 viewers), NXT 0.25 (750,000 viewers)
November 20th: AEW 0.39 (893,000 viewers), NXT 0.30 (916,000 viewers)
November 27th: AEW 0.26 (663,000 viewers), NXT 0.24 (818,000 viewers)
December 4th: AEW 0.32 (851,000 viewers), NXT 0.29 (845,000 viewers)
December 11th: AEW 0.28 (778,000 viewers), NXT 0.24 (778,000 viewers)
December 18th: AEW 0.25 (683,000 viewers), NXT 0.27 (795,000 viewers)
December 25th: AEW N/A, NXT 0.22 (831,000 viewers)
January 1st: AEW 0.36 (967,000 viewers), NXT 0.15 (548,000)
January 8th: AEW 0.36 (947,000 viewers), NXT 0.19 (721,000)
January 15th: AEW 0.38 (940,000 viewers), NXT 0.21 (700,000)
January 22nd: AEW 0.35 (871,000 viewers), NXT 0.24 (769,000)
January 29nd: AEW 0.34 (828,000 viewers), NXT 0.22 (712,000)
February 5th: AEW 0.36 (928,000 viewers), NXT 0.22 (770,000)
February 12th: AEW 0.30 (817,000 viewers), NXT 0.24 (757,000)
February 19th: AEW 0.31 (893,000 viewers), NXT 0.25 (794,000)
February 26th: AEW 0.30 (865,000 viewers), NXT 0.23 (717,000)
March 4th: AEW 0.35 (906,000 viewers), NXT 0.23 (718,000)
March 11th: AEW 0.26 (766,000 viewers), NXT 0.21 (697,000)
March 18th: AEW 0.35 (932,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (542,000)
March 25th: AEW 0.34 (819,000 viewers), NXT 0.20 (669,000)
April 1: AEW 0.25 (685,000 viewers), NXT 0.15 (590,000)
April 8: AEW 0.26 (692,000 viewers), NXT 0.19 (693,000)
April 15: AEW 0.25 (683,000 viewers), NXT 0.17 (692,000)
April 22: AEW 0.25 (731,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (665,000)
April 29: AEW 0.27 (693,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (637,000)
May 6: AEW 0.28 (732,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (663,000)
May 13: AEW 0.23 (654,000 viewers), NXT 0.15 (604,000)
May 20: AEW 0.26 (701,000 viewers), NXT 0.13 (592,000)
May 27: AEW 0.32 (821,000 viewers), NXT 0.19 (731,000)
June 3: AEW 0.29 (730,000 viewers), NXT 0.20 (715,000)
June 10: AEW 0.23 (677,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (673,000)
June 17: AEW 0.28 (772,000 viewers), NXT 0.20 (746,000)
June 24: AEW 0.22 (633,000 viewers), NXT 0.19 (786,000)
July 1: AEW 0.29 (748,000 viewers), NXT 0.22 (792,000)
July 8: AEW 0.28 (715,000 viewers), NXT 0.20 (759,000)
July 15: AEW 0.29 (788,000 viewers), NXT 0.14 (631,000)
July 22: AEW 0.32 (845,000 viewers), NXT 0.17 (615,000)
July 29: AEW 0.30 (773,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (707,000)
August 5: AEW 0.36 (901,000 viewers), NXT 0.20 (753,000)
August 12: AEW 0.32 (792,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (619,000)
August 19: AEW N/A, NXT 0.24 (853,000)
August 22: AEW 0.31 (755,000 viewers), NXT N/A
August 26: AEW N/A, NXT 0.24 (824,000)
August 28: AEW 0.29 (813,000 viewers), NXT N/A
September 1: AEW N/A, NXT 0.26, (849,000)
September 2: AEW 0.36 (928,000 viewers), NXT 0.04, (183,000)*
September 8: AEW N/A, NXT 0.22 (838,000)
September 9: AEW 0.37 (1.016 million viewers), NXT N/A*
September 16: AEW 0.34 (886,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (689,000)
September 22: AEW 0.26 (585,000 viewers)**, NXT N/A
September 23: AEW 0.32 (835,000 viewers), NXT 0.18 (696,000)
September 30: AEW 0.33 (866,000 viewers), NXT 0.19 (732,000)
October 7: AEW 0.31 (753,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (639,000)
October 14: AEW 0.30 (826,000 viewers), NXT 0.17 (651,000)
October 21: AEW 0.30 (753,000 viewers), NXT 0.16 (644,000)
October 28: AEW 0.31 (781,000 viewers), NXT 0.25 (876,000)
November 4: AEW 0.30 (717,000 viewers), NXT 0.14 (610,000)

* – These episodes were reruns of the Tuesday new episodes of NXT that re-aired on the SyFy channel.
** – This was a special late night, one-hour Tuesday night edition of AEW Dynamite