Tony Khan Addresses AEW Rampage's Ratings Falling
The Aug. 20 episode of AEW Rampage — which saw CM Punk make his return to pro wrestling in front of a sold-out Chicago crowd — raked in 1.129 million viewers and was the highest-rated cable show of the night. Unfortunately, All Elite Wrestling's second weekly show hasn't been able to replicate that audience size since then. The last three Rampage's haven't been able to break 600,000 viewers and the show hasn't pulled a .30 rating (the show's premiere rating) since Sept. 3. However, AEW president Tony Khan is still confident the show can climb back up despite its late Friday night timeslot.
"It took us two years for Dynamite to hit #1 of the week, and it only took us two for Rampage to do that," Khan said while speaking at the Monaco Streaming Film Festival (h/t Wrestling Inc.). "Our second episode has hit that. It's a challenge Friday nights at 10 o' clock to get good viewership. We've seen great audience though, relative to the time slot. We're still being top in the slot, and I really believe with our fan base, they follow us. As long as we promote it and keep delivering great matches, they follow us practically everywhere we go because they really love AEW," Tony said. "So, within reason, I want to keep finding ways to give them great content without oversaturating, also. So right now, I do feel like we're in a sweet spot with the amount of wrestling for everybody. They seem to have found a good groove, and I've coined a phrase recently: 'WYW'. Watch your wrestling, and I just want people to find what they like, enjoy it, and, for us, AEW gives three hours of great TV programming each week."
One thing Rampage did manage to do was beat SmackDown head-to-head in the ratings a couple of weeks back when the Blue Brand was shunted to FS1 and given an extra 30 minutes. Here's what's lined up for this week's episode, taped after this week's Dynamite:
- Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston (World Title Eliminator Tournament)
- Dr. Britt Baker vs. Abadon (Trick or Treat Match, Abadon gets a future title shot if she wins)
- Dante Martin vs. Matt Sydal