The war is over. The Wednesday night war that is. In the battle of who will flinch first, it was WWE.
The announcement of WWE and USA Network with the NXT move to Tuesdays, effectively ends a rivalry that started on October 2, 2019 with both NXT and AEW airing on the same night.
While NXT had a two-week lead, debuting on USA Network on September 18, AEW pretty much dominated every week during this one and a half year run, winning the absolute majority of the viewers every week and only losing only once in the 18-49 demographic.
NXT’s arrival on USA Network was seen by many as a way to prevent AEW from growing its television audience, something that seems to have worked as AEW continues to hover between 700,000 to 800,000 viewers every week.
In total, AEW won 67 head-to-head encounters while NXT won just 12. The two shows only drew the same audience once. AEW’s largest audience remains the inaugural show which did 1,409,000 viewers and the same can be said for NXT which pulled in 1,179,000 viewers unopposed on the first night.
It’s safe to say that both shows will grow unopposed as seen in the past when one of the shows was pre-empted temporarily due to other programming.
NXT and AEW will go in a final head-to-head on Wednesday, April 7 and NXT will begin on its new night the week after. The final NXT show on Wednesday will be night one of the two-night NXT Takeover: Stand & Deliver.
