Eric Bischoff Talks The Wednesday Night Wars Being Over
Former WCW President Eric Bischoff spoke on his 83 Weeks podcast about the Wednesday Night Wars being over as NXT has now moved to Tuesday nights. Last week with the first time this year with NXT and AEW on separate nights, NXT garnered its biggest rating of the year and AEW achieved their second biggest audience ever. Bischoff said it's a great move for WWE and believes both companies will benefit from the move, but hopes the first day success they experienced can be sustained overtime.
"It's great that WWE decided to move over to Tuesday nights," Bischoff said. "They thought that was a better spot for them for whatever reason, but they made the move and it worked out for them. Obviously it worked out for AEW, they delivered the 2nd highest rating in the history of their show. Now they're up to 1.2 million which is fantastic by today's standards, 5 years ago, it would've been a death sentence.
"By today's standards, that's damn good and good for them, it's growth, they're moving the needle. They're moving their audience, that's a great thing. The challenge is going to be maintaining that throughout the summer when people are busy playing softball, hanging with their buddies, taking their kid to little league, doing whatever they're doing which is not sitting in the house watching television because that's what they've been doing all winter."
Bischoff also mentioned how WWE has been able to dominate every other wrestling company with their relationships with advertisers. The 2021 WWE Hall of Famer said no company stands anywhere close to WWE, and haven't for 30 years.
"[Advertising for wrestling is] much different today," Bischoff said. "Largely I credit WWE for that. I don't think anybody has done a better job making professional wrestling programming as popular with advertisers as WWE. It's not even close, nobody has.
"It's been a long term effort, 30 year effort and it's paying off big dividends."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.