During the latest edition of his “83 Weeks” podcast, Eric Bischoff commented on the AEW and NXT viewership numbers since they went to doing events with no crowds, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On if he thinks wrestling shows with full crowds will resume in 2020: “We’re starting to see things getting under control, but there is a big difference between getting things under control and getting to the point where not only government officials and industry, the people that own these arenas and the insurance companies that insure them, the entire industry as a whole gets comfortable with the idea of putting 10, 12, 15, 20, 60,000 people in an arena, or a football stadium for that matter, I don’t see it happening this year, and I’m an optimistic person.”
On what he would do regarding WWE and AEW TV ratings falling as they continue to run shows without a crowd: “I think if I was running something right now and was faced with the situation that we’re in right now, I would advocate, I don’t know if anybody would buy it or not, but I would advocate pulling the stuff off the air. Now I know WWE can’t do that. They have a massive television contract with FOX and USA. Again, I don’t know what AEW’s relationship is with TNT. But if it were possible, without any risk of losing said contract in the future, to just take it off the air because unfortunately the situation that we’re seeing now, WWE is continuing to put content out and we continue to see the audience deteriorate week after week after week.”
On how AEW and NXT viewership numbers right now are ‘frightening’: “I think AEW was around 653,000 viewers, let that sink in just a minute. Half a million viewers across the country, a population of 330 million people, in the United States who are locked in their homes and AEW was able to, whatever the number was, 650,000 and NXT might have been 652,000. That’s frightening. That means the people that were watching AEW when they were kind of living in that 700,000 to 900,000 viewer category. NXT was probably 10-15% below that on average, and head-to-head probably 20% below whatever the numbers were. A good chunk, 25-30% of that audience, has said, ‘Eh, I don’t want to watch this stuff anymore.’ And they have made that emotional decision to seek their entertainment elsewhere. We gotta get them back. How do you get them back? What are you going to do? Especially in the case of AEW which really only launched eight months ago, six months ago, however long ago it was, they still have the new car smell, right? And now they’re gonna be faced with, ‘Oh my God, we got to rebuild this audience.’ How do you do that when you’re still new? NXT, same thing, they’ve been struggling, they’ve had a hard time competing with AEW.”
On the risk of convincing your audience that your product isn’t that fun to watch: “If you don’t pull it off the air, and you don’t hold on to the integrity of your product, if you don’t convince your audience that they should find their entertainment elsewhere by virtue of the fact that putting things out there each and every week that they find boring and they’re leaving you as a result, if you don’t make that decision and it’s a longterm decision and it’s a painful one, what I would fear, what I would try to analyze in terms of risk and reward or risk analysis, is what’s the bigger risk? Convincing my audience over the next six months that my product sucks because I’m putting on a product that wasn’t ever designed to be produced in front of no audience, or would my odds be better if I pulled my programming, and in WWE’s case, they have a treasure trove of classic material that they could still utilize to have content up, but would I be better off pulling the show until things normalize and coming back with vengeance, with excitement, and a live audience? Or should I spend the next six months convincing my audience that my product isn’t that much fun to watch?”
On how the viewers that are leaving wrestling right now may never come back: “One could argue, well everybody knows, everybody’s aware of the fact that when things get back to normal, the product itself will get back to normal. That’s an argument, and I would listen to that argument, but in my gut, I feel like the audience wasn’t that strong to begin with. If you start losing that audience, and they decide that there’s something else more interesting or entertaining to watch, you may get a portion of them back, you may, you may not. And if you do get a portion of them back, what percentage will that be? You don’t know. It’s hard to say.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
