Image: AEW

Going against ongoing news coverage of the storming of the United States Capitol building, Wednesday night’s AEW Dynamite averaged 662,000 viewers on TNT. NXT averaged 641,000 viewers on the USA Network.

The combined 1.303 million viewers was the lowest since May.

Dynamite was down 32.2 percent in total viewers from last week’s Brodie Lee tribute show. NXT was up 9.4 percent from last week, which clearly lost viewers to the tribute show. Overall Wednesday viewership was down 16.6 percent.

Big news stories generally affect AEW more than NXT, but this had an affect on both shows as — even though NXT was up from last week’s near-record low — the show was expected to do a big audience for its loaded up New Year’s Evil special episode. Dynamite also presented a special episode with New Year’s Smash night one.

With news programming dominating the day, Dynamite finished 48th overall on cable with a 0.25 rating in the 18-49 demo. That’s the second lowest it has ever finished in the rankings — only behind the November 4, 2020 election week episode where all spots on the cable top 50 chart were taken by news programming. Dynamite was down 37.5 percent from last week in the demo.

NXT finished 68th on the cable charts with a 0.16 rating in 18-49, up 33.3 percent from last week. Last week was the lowest NXT had ever done in the demo.

Detailed demo comparisons are not available at this time due to NXT failing to crack the top 50.

Year-over-year, Dynamite was down 30.1 percent in total viewers and 30.6 percent in 18-49. NXT was down 11.1 percent in viewers and 15.8 percent in the demo.

Here’s a look at the last 10 weeks of viewership and 18-49 demo ratings for both Dynamite and NXT: