There’s still a misconception out there that AEW “Dynamite” gets a huge boost from “Big Bang Theory” being its lead-in.
Yeah, no, that’s not what happens.
Let’s look at the May 3 “Dynamite” as a case in point. The first quarter-hour of the show, 8-8:15 p.m. ET, drew an average of 895,000 viewers, according to Wrestlenomics.
The lead-in from the 7:30-8 p.m. ET rerun of “Big Bang Theory” that night averaged 813,000 viewers, per SpoilerTV.
This is a trend dating back a while now, but so is the misconception that “Dynamite” gets an artificially high number for its first QH basically because people forget to change the channel from “Big Bang,” then do when they see the next show involves rasslin’.
If anything, “Dynamite” gives “Big Bang” a boost because people waiting to tune in for the rasslin’ flip the channel to TBS a few minutes early so they don’t miss the start of the show at 8 p.m.
(I’m raising my hand here.)
The misconception persists because of the reporting on how “Dynamite” consistently loses viewers from that first QH – for example, last week’s show saw a drop from the average of 895,000 from 8-8:15 p.m. ET to 804,000 for the 8:15-8:30 p.m. ET QH.
That’s more an indictment of what you’d have to call bad booking on the part of Tony Khan, who still needs to figure out how to format a show so that the people who tune in at the start to see what’s coming actually hang around.
I looked through Wrestlenomics’ QH breakdowns of the past couple of months of WWE “Raw” and “Smackdown,” and “Raw” generally keeps its audience the first two hours, with a big dropoff in Hour 3, while “Smackdown” seems to at least hold its audience, if not some weeks building slightly from where it starts, from the first QH to the end of its two-hour run.
Warner Brothers Discovery clearly sees value in AEW programming. Reports this week have the broadcast giant set to announce a five-year deal that would give AEW a second two-hour show and pay AEW a cool $200 million a year for its five hours of weekly TV, which makes sense when you consider that the “Big Bang Theory” reruns ran north of that per year, and “Big Bang” gets similar viewer numbers.
This would seem to suggest that WWE, whose two weekly shows draw two to three times the audience of “Dynamite,” is about to get bonkers dollars when it negotiates its next TV deals for “Raw” and “Smackdown.”
Back to AEW and its retention of viewers problem: maybe somebody at Warner Brothers Discovery can get Khan some help with the formatting so that WBD and AEW can get the most out of the people who want to watch AEW-branded content.
The other issue to approach, later on, then being, figuring out a way to get more people to want to watch AEW.
One thing at a time, though.
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Chris Graham
