'AEW Dynamite' Total Audience, Female Demos Up Slightly For 12/21 Episode

The Nielsen ratings for the December 21 edition of AEW Dynamite that were released on Thursday afternoon were a mixed bag, albeit mostly positive news. According to the reporting from both Wrestlenomics and ShowBuzzDaily, Wednesday night's show, which featured match five of the best-of-seven series between The Elite and Death Triangle as well as Jamie Hayter's first women's title defense (against Hikaru Shida), total viewers aged two and up increased 1% over last week to 957,000. 396,000 of those viewers were in the key adults aged 18-49 demographic, a 7% drop from last week's 428,000. That was good enough for a 0.30 rating in the key demo, which earned "Dynamite" the third place ranking on ShowBuzzDaily's list of the day's cable originals.

Only ESPN's college football and basketball programming bested "Dynamite" among the day's cable originals, with AEW beating the usual competition from "The Challenge: Ride or Dies," "Real Housewives of Salt Lake City," and news programming.

In the other demographics reported by ShowBuzzDaily, the most notable figures may be the increases in the female viewer demographics for an episode headlined by a women's title match. Though we won't have a full picture until quarter-hour ratings become available, the show was up in both women aged 18-49 (from 0.19 to 0.21, n 11% increase) and female viewers aged 12-34 (0.13 to 0.15, a 15% increase). However, the show was down 13% in men aged 18-49, from 0.46 to 0.40. In the young adult demo covering people aged 18-34, "Dynamite" was up a tick from 0.24 to 0.25, a 4% increase.