The 2020 NBA Playoffs officially begin on Monday, and due to the sport’s prominence on TNT All Elite Wrestling will have to shake up its schedule a few times in the coming weeks. That starts this week with the usual episode getting moved from Aug. 19 to Saturday, Aug. 22 at 6 p.m. EST (meaning it will partially run head-to-head with NXT TakeOver: XXX). The shake-ups will continue in a few weeks, so AEW president Tony Khan decided to break down all of the changes via his Twitter account. By mid-September, the schedule will be back to normal
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You can see the full schedule breakdown below. This week’s Saturday night edition of Dynamite will feature AEW TNT Champion Cody Rhodes vs. Brodie Lee, the finals of the AEW Women’s Tag Team Cup Tournament, The Elite vs. The Dark Order, The Lucha Bros, The Butcher & The Blade vs. The Natural Nightmares and Jurassic Express and Darby Allin vs. TBA.
Yes. We’ll have a new 1 hour episode late Wednesday after NBA on September 16 + then we’ll have another new full 2 hour show on Thursday September 17.
— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) August 16, 2020
Dynamite:
Sat 8/22
Thurs 8/27
Wed 9/2
(All Out on Sat 9/5)
Wed 9/9
Late night Wed 9/16
Thurs 9/17
Then back to every Wednesday!
The changes in schedule will undoubtedly have some impact on the weekly television ratings battle between Dynamite and NXT. The young promotions has dominated WWE’s Black and Gold Brand throughout the first year, bringing in a higher viewership 36 weeks and winning the 18-49 key demographic 44 weeks.
However don’t expect Rhodes to get too into the weeds with the ratings, as the executive vice president explained in
“I think early on we were looking at it, and there’s really that specialness with X amount of wrestling fans tuning in on a Wednesday night,” Rhodes told TalkSport back in mid-July. “As a big wrestling fan, what does that mean to me etc. I think now with where we’re at and as we’re gearing towards our next big pay-per-view, and we’re gearing towards Fight for the Fallen, we really have to put our focus on having the best show. It’s really easy to get caught up in the weeds with like ‘for X amount of weeks we beat WWE in the ratings’ or get into this wild demo discussion – if you ever catch me tweeting about the demos, please just delete my account.”
