AEW's Chris Jericho: Why The 18-49 Demo Is More Important Than Overall Viewership

Much has been made of All Elite Wrestling's ratings since the company was founded in 2019 and the emphasis has always been on Dynamite and Rampage's viewership in the key 18-49 demographic as opposed to overall viewership.

Speaking on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch, Chris Jericho reflected on the Wednesday Night Wars and he explained why the 18-49 demo is more important than overall viewership. 

"No. Not to be blasé about it, but I really don't care [about NXT's statistics]. It doesn't matter to me. Even when we were in the wrestling war, quote-unquote, on the Wednesday nights, we never followed what NXT did. Now when the demos came out - that's why I started 'Demo God' because everyone was talking about NXT. Sometimes they'd be beating us in overall numbers, and I was like, 'You guys don't get it. The demo, we're killing them.' [They'd say] 'Oh well it doesn't matter, it's all about [the viewership]' And I realised very quickly, years ago, it's not about [viewership] - OK, there's a million people watching this show and 500,000 people watching this one. The demo of the million draws 200,000 [viewers] and the demo of the 500,000 show is 400,000. The 500,000 wins," Jericho began.

"And you're like, 'how does that make sense?' Because the demo is what people base the advertising rates on. It's just the way of the world, 18 to 49 [the key demo] is the bread and butter. If you got a bunch of 12-year-olds watching, that's good because they'll grow into 18s. If you got a bunch of 60-year-olds watching - not to be classless - but nobody really cares, that's not the demo they're going for. 

"So when you learn that information, that's all that I cared about. It's 'What are we doing with AEW?' We never went head to head with NXT and I know for a fact that they had AEW on their screens as they were running their show. 'Oh, there's Jericho right now. I'll keep so-and-so in there a little bit longer.' Whatever. We didn't worry about that because all we can worry about is our own stuff. How can we tell better stories? How can we be a better show? How can we connect better with our audience? And obviously, we did that because NXT ran screaming away from us and completely restructured their whole show after they were basically embarrassed by AEW. And now AEW is getting to the point where we're starting to get, sometimes beating WWE Raw in the demos, beating SmackDown in the demos. That should never be happening, but it is," he concluded.

H/T to WrestleZone