NXT TV’s Tuesday Debut Brings in Over 800,000 Viewers, Ratings Steady

– It was a new era for NXT last night, as the weekly NXT TV show began on its new regular night of Tuesday at 8:00 pm EST on the USA Network. This put an effective end to the so-called Wednesday Night Wars with NXT and AEW Dynamite running head-to-head every week. Showbuzz Daily now has the overnight ratings for NXT’s debut for its new regular timeslot. Thus far, it looks like the choice to move the show to Tuesday nights permanently paid off.

Last night’s post-TakeOver episode had an average viewing audience of 805,000 viewers. That’s an increase of the 768,000 viewers for the overnight audience from last week’s show, which ran on Wednesday night opposite AEW Dynamite. Additionally, last week’s show was Night 1 of NXT TakeOver: Stand & Deliver, which was also simulcast on Peacock, and the show outdrew Dynamite in terms of viewership (but not the key demo ratings).

In the P18-49 key demo ratings, the show finished with a 0.22 rating, which is identical to the rating for last week’s NXT TakeOver special. It was also enough for NXT to finish in the Top 10 of the Cable Top 150 rankings this week at No. 9.

The last time NXT was able to break over 800,000 viewers was for the Halloween Havoc special, which aired on Oct. 28 and drew 876,000 viewers and a 0.25 rating in the key demo. For comparison, the two “Super Tuesday” NXT episodes that aired on Tuesday night on USA Network in August due to the NHL playoffs drew 853,00 viewers (Aug. 19) and 824,000 viewers (Aug. 26). Both of those shows drew identical ratings of 0.24.

Curse of Oak Island on History Channel topped the ratings for last night with 0.44. Tucker Carlson Tonight on FOX News channel topped the viewership for the evening with 2.943 million viewers. As noted above, NXT ranked No. 9 putting it solidly in the Top 10 of the rankings. Last week, NXT finished at No. 11, so it’s got to be nice for the show to find itself in the Top 10 cable TV shows for the first time in a while.

The next challenge will be for AEW Dynamite on TNT, which has been in a viewership decline as of late and fell below 700,000 viewers last week, now that it’s no longer running up against NXT on Wednesdays.