Planet Kayfabe: No Excuse For Poor Ratings

Let’s talk about the NBA Finals.  By the way, congratulations to the Boston Celtics. They were the best team all year, dominated the postseason, and are going to hang banner #18 at the Boston Garden.  There, I got that out of the way.  AEW a year ago against the NBA Finals were doing a hair over 900,000 total viewers and now they are in the high 600,000’s.  Two years ago against the Finals, AEW managed to get over a million viewers.  In the past year alone AEW has lost a quarter of their fans year-over-year.

Oh, and did I mention that this year’s NBA Finals were the lowest rated since 2007?  Yeah.  I probably wouldn’t want to use them as an excuse anymore.

There’s no excuse for losing a quarter of your fans in one year. Playoffs, injuries, holidays, daylight saving. I’ve heard ’em all. You need to find answers and identify real stars. Yes MJF is a star, but he’s been neutered a lot as a babyface that is all “Mr. AEW” now. Do I think he should still be burying them in promos? No, but he shouldn’t have from the start, but you can’t unring that bell now. You made him that guy and all a sudden after teasing leaving WWE for two years its “oh I signed a new deal, got a new tattoo now I love Tony Khan.” He lost a lot of his appeal after that and there is no turning back.  The only turn is for him to just go full-heel again. The only problem is this company has no other options at babyface that aren’t older part-timers or simply not ready to main event.

It is going to take time and they have to start now.  Yes, ratings aren’t indicative of whether a show is good or not, but it is a good measure of interest and how hot a product is.  You don’t just  lose 400,000 weekly viewers in two years all because of one bad show or because of CM Punk, who spent most of his AEW run injured and off TV, was fired by the company.   It is a gradual grind. Just like it was for WWE. You had your bedrock of hardcore fans who watched out of routine, but you also had a vast majority that stopped watching and it took a long time for WWE to regain a lot of fans (or create new fans) to the point where house shows and random mid-spring Smackdowns are a hot ticket again.

Much of this on Tony Khan as well.  His ridiculous interviews and making himself the face of the company while embarrassing himself to the press, on social media and in interviews only turned off a lot of fans.   Many, many fans were mad at WWE.  Wanted to take a break. Found their new squeeze in Tony Khan. Fell head over heels. Then after seeing a lot of his quirks, went over to WWE as if to say “yeah, I’m not mad at you anymore. Lets get back together”.   Keep in mind, AEW’s hotness early on came from an immense fan backlash to WWE that was building up for at least a decade.    Now that Vince McMahon is gone and the product has gotten better a lot of fans just can’t stay mad anymore and went back to their old friend WWE.  Much like an old lover. I mean, you can’t be mad at a guy anymore when you tell him “get a haircut, stop drinking and get a job or else I’m never coming back”  and then he does.

All-in-all ratings are complicated.  Its no one thing that causes a rise or decline. Its a series of things over time.  Look at WWF in 1997. Some consider it their best year, but they were losing to Nitro in the ratings.  However, 1997 built up a lot of goodwill that allowed for the dominance of 1998 (and onward) to happen.

Tony Khan needs to write and book like his job depends on it. Not like how he is, which is a rich kid spending his dad’s money with no need or urgency to make this whole thing successful and just books to match make.  Khan’s booking style is literally E-fed/video game booking.  If you’re too young to know what that means, just trust me.  Nothing matters in that style. Its just put two guys on TV, give them time, and let them have a great match.  Well, you’ve ruined great matches for people when you just toss them together for no reason on any random show.  Any idiot can take two great workers, give them 25 minutes and say “go at it, fellas” and come off as a genius when 1.500 fans are chanting “This is awesome”  and then look at the ratings a few days later and continued decline in attendance and ask yourself “how is this possible”.

It’s because you need to change. I’m not saying finding a big star is easy, but you need to start somewhere and when you’re in a hole you have to stop digging at some point.

Thanks again for reading.  Happy summer, everyone.  Congrats again to the Boston Celtics. Not only did you dominate the league, but now you’re killing AEW according to some apologists who want to pass themselves off as honest reporters.

Take care everyone. For NoDQ, I’m Paul Matthews.   See you next time.