Chris Jericho On AEW Beginning To Beat WWE RAW And SmackDown In Key Demo
AEW's Chris Jericho joined Sports Media with Richard Deitsch to talk about AEW's growth in the ratings department.
One thing Jericho claimed to not worry about all that much was the numbers for WWE. Though he did point out that AEW had defeated NXT when they went head to head, Jericho largely chooses to focus on what AEW is doing, feeling that it's a waste of time to focus on the other side.
"Not to be blasé about it but I really don't care," Jericho said. "It doesn't matter to me. Even when we were in the wrestling war on the Wednesday nights, we never followed what NXT did. Now when the demos came out, that's why I started the Demo God. Everyone was talking about NXT and sometimes they'd be beating us in overall numbers. And I was like 'you guys don't get it. In the demo, we're killing them.' 'Oh it doesn't matter. It's all about the (overall rating).' I realized very quickly years ago, it's not about the overall number. It's like 'okay, there's a million people watching this show and five hundred thousand watching this one. And the demo of the million is two hundred thousand, and the demo for the five hundred thousand is four hundred thousand. The five hundred thousand wins.' And it's 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. 18-49 is the bread and butter. If you have a bunch of twelve years olds watching, that's good because they grow into 18's. If you've got a bunch of sixty year olds watching, not to be classless, because nobody really cares. That's not the demo you're going for.
"So when you learn that information, that's all that I cared about, was 'what are we doing as 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. Keep so and so in there a little bit longer.' 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's getting to the point where we're starting to sometimes beat RAW in the demos, beating Smackdown in the demos. That shouldn't be happening right now, but it is. So we're smart enough to go 'okay, we're inside the castle. How can we make the castle stronger and get more people inside the castle. The White Walkers are out there, but if we worry about what the White Walkers strategy is, we'll be paying too much attention to their stuff instead of worrying about our stuff. And someone's going to bust down the castle wall and then we're done.' So I think we've got to just worry about what we're doing and stay more focused on that. And that's what we do, at least that's what I do."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Sports Media with Richard Deitsch and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription