During a recent episode of The Jim Cornette Experience, the legendary Jim Cornette discussed the AEW Dynamite ratings.
“What I’m looking at is, and we’ve always talked about Nielsen ratings, or any kind of television ratings are estimates at best, like the polls on anything. And we’ve talked about the problems in the Nielsen figures, especially locally, more so than nationally. But nevertheless, if it’s the same rating service and it’s the same method of collecting the information and everybody is judged in the same fashion. Then even if the numbers aren’t right, the concept is right,” Cornette said. “So, what I’m looking at as a person analyzing this program, regardless of how many people don’t have cable anymore or are going to stream and do whatever the fuck and you can’t tell what they’re doing and all TV ratings are down, all TV shows don’t start at a certain point and lose 25 percent of their audience by the time the thing’s over with. It’s because this program is not as popular or as well viewed as the rerun of an old sitcom that comes before it, and they can’t even keep the people from the first hour to the second hour that tune into it on purpose. They’re not interested in what’s going on from the beginning of the show to the end because it’s so inconsistent, that’s what I’m looking at. Regardless of who’s watching, most the people that start watching this show don’t stick with it.
“I would attribute something, like, they have stars, they could’ve had more stars by now than they do. They could have made some and they could have made more, 80-20. Yeah, when you get to the network level and SmackDown, yes, you need the stars, you need Brock Lesnar, you need John Cena or whatever. But this, with the built-in audience that AEW has, the base audience that will watch anything that they produce as a cushion, they’ve had enough time, they could have got some more people interested in a few of their fucking talents and they would at least be keeping all the people that start watching till the finish. And again, yes, there’s attrition to Raw, it’s three hours and it’s the most boring thing I’ve ever seen, and they still don’t lose 25 percent of their audience. And SmackDown doesn’t come close to losing 25 percent of the audience until the end of it. And the problem is, the wrestling fan of all previous generations, not just mine, not just yours, all previous generations, you remember, this was for 50 years.”
Cornette continued, “They watched every second of the wrestling program in their area and they never missed a live match. Those were the real dedicated fans. That meant one hour of TV on a weekend, two if you lived in Houston or Atlanta or whatever and you know what, a ticket to ringside for your matches that week or every two weeks or that month. So, it’s not a generational thing about attention spans, it’s just I don’t think is as interesting. It doesn’t captivate people’s attention anymore because they don’t believe it anymore. They don’t believe the people involved, except for a few. You can’t get wrapped up in the booking and the personalities because AEW is mostly for people who like phony wrestling and WWE they’re as boring as fuck, so I think that’s what it is. We’re just getting less fanatical engagement from large numbers of people like we used to have, because there’s a lot more to keep track of than there used to be and less reason to keep track of it because it’s less believable and less interesting.”
(H/T to WrestlingHeadlines.com for the transcription)
