Ratings Mean As Much As Magazines
It seems like as long ago as I can remember watching wrestling, there was the ratings conversation. Granted, I didn’t get really deep into this artform until right before the heralded Monday Night Wars with WCW and WWF. To me I felt like ratings were just a known measure of wrestling success. Little did I know it was a very new thing at the time, yet something that would age like milk in the hot sun.
In the mid to late 90s, the main source of any level of entertainment was your television whether with a cable or satellite connection or the fabled VCR. We all watched any and every thing that came into our eyesight and for me it was pro wrestling. Programming the VCR at about 7 years old, I was obsessed with Nitro and RAW and apparently, so was everyone else. It wasn’t long until wrestling was the coolest thing there was and the nWo shirt was filling every school in America.
WCW was really a Cinderella story in many ways but specifically in the ratings war. Only until Bischoff started to actually acknowledge them publicly, as well as spoil taped RAW episodes that he got results for from dirtsheets did it really become something the average fan even thought about.The internet was incredibly small back then but for those on it, numbers that used to not matter at all, suddenly had a weight that would sink companies and create for decades to come.
I think that’s the main issue here, most of us recall those glory days. We remember the Monday Wars and what it meant to the fandom. It was the only time I remember it being “cool” to like wrestling and those short years were magical. However, those years were conditioning a whole generation of fans to expect something that would never be tangible again. When the cords began fraying, and those of us that once had parents to pay for that cable going towards torrenting and video streaming the product just never changed. Then these new generations have grown up knowing no better, being fed creative slop for the most part very late into the 2010s until Dynamite hit TNT.
Now it’s 2025 and even though the majority of young adults don’t watch anything on traditional television avenues, we still hear about ratings. Now however, it has taken a more snarky and trolling vibe. When your tribe is doing bad, you gotta hit the other one with the “lol your ratings suck” just like someone would criticize a movie without VHS distribution today. It’s moronic. Moreso, it’s just archaic and doesn’t “own” anyone in the least.
So when the news came out that MAX’s AEW views are fantastic and that combining those with the traditional ratings, AEW is averaging around 1 million viewers every Wednesday, the internet had a hissy fit and it’ll be great to see that same crowd seethe when Dynamite overtakes Nitro as the longest primetime wrestling show ever on TBS or TNT. Someone go check up on Eric Bischoff, will you?
