Jim Ross On The Importance Of The 18-49 Demographic In AEW And WWE NXT Ratings War

During the Grilling JR Podcast, Jim Ross covered the career of Sable in the WWF. Ross mentioned the day he met her, which was during a meeting with her then-husband and WWF superstar, Marc Mero. He also described how moments after the meeting, Vince McMahon called him in his office to talk about Sable as opposed to Mero.

"He said something along the lines of, 'Did you see what I just saw?' Basically, he was declaring that he thought [Sable] had the look to be a star," Ross said. "Vince was right about that, she did have the look to be a star. Our conundrum was: what do we do with her?

"If you've got a talented person and you know they've got talent, it is incumbent upon the creative arm of the entity to make that person relevant and find something for that person to do. That was the deal. He saw star power and a star in the making."

Ross talks about how different the wrestling business was back in the day compared to today. He says the locker room was based around only one female in the past, whereas today there are tons of women who are big stars in the ring.

"We had one female primarily in the locker room: Sunny," Ross said. "Now you've got what? 50? 100? There's a lot of women working in WWE right now, which is great. It wasn't that way then."

During the past several weeks of Being The Elite, including this week's episode, Matt Jackson has done a segment trying to please the 50+ demographic that AEW continues to lose during the Wednesday Night War.

Tony Khan and others in AEW constantly cite the 18-49 year old demographic as the one number that truly matters in the war against NXT. They say the total number of people watching isn't what decides who won the week. Ross talked about the 18-49 demographic in the ratings war between AEW and NXT on Wednesday nights, and why that demo is so important compared to the others.

"That's what the advertisers are buying," Ross said. "They're not looking at the total audience, they're not looking at 50+ [demographic] unless you're selling Geritol or something... The 18-49 [demographic] is the money that's where you're shopping."

A known way to introduce new characters into the wrestling business for years has been the weekly vignette. We've seen versions of this done recently, with Killer Kross in NXT leading up to his debut with the company. Ross talks about vignettes and how he believes it's a major key to the wrestling business that is missing today.

"I think that's a big missed opportunity in the business now," JR said. "I am a firm believer that creatively produced, episodic vignettes do more to get a talent over than just having a cold match on TV. I truly believe that. I believe that a company can commit to getting talents over if they have a systematic program that has a beginning, middle, and an end, and when you get to the end of the vignettes, you preconditioned the audience for this individual. And he/she steps right in their first storyline."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Grilling JR with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.