(Also confirmed by SRS)
Context: Fast Nationals are the initial, immediate Nielsen ratings numbers that come in right after a show airs. Why they matter here is that they are always significantly lower than what the final average Nielsen rating ends up being once all the numbers are tallied and calculated. WWE buys the fast national information, which costs thousands of dollars per-episode, and pushes them out to friendly “reporters” and social media pundits in order to create a narrative that AEW programming isn’t watched by a lot of people. Most recently, this happened with an episode of Collision from a few weeks ago, which did a fast national number of like 122,000 average viewers, and then come Monday the real rating was published and it ended up being within Collision’s normal average rating, which is closer to 400,000. However, the damage had been done, as the entire weekend people on social media were loudly proclaiming that Collision did a terrible number and AEW was “in the mud” as a result.
A little more context from WON:
“Brandon Thurston noted just how almost impossible it is to get fast nationals on cable shows. Fast nationals on network shows that come out that next morning, while not as easily available as in the past, are still out there but for cable, that information is almost non-existent. Fast nationals access is highly exclusive. Cable fast nationals are not available to any run of the mill Nielsen customer who may be a source (unlike final ratings and unlike broadcast fast affiliates which are more broadly available and give an early look at Smackdown). Cable fast nationals must be requested and purchased for thousands of dollars for each episode. So the possible sources are far fewer than for typical ratings reporting. And I know WWE has been ordering AEW fast nationals every week roughly since Nick (Khan) started. Plus I know WWE PR tried to feed the numbers to a long line of reporters who long ago decided it was too shady.”
I also would like to take a moment to thank everyone here for not constantly talking about stupid TV ratings!
Yeah I purposely avoid ratings stuff unless it’s something real newsworthy like this. It’s 2024, fuck ratings lol.
All my homies hate antiquated and has never been an accurate means of measuring viewership!
None of the promos I care about even have TV broadcasts lol.
Streaming is the future.
Hopefully AEW’s next TV deal will include streaming. I’m about ready to kill YTTV at this point
You can already watch aew streaming, just get a VPN and use Triller.tv.
It’s way better too, no commercial breaks.
New management exactly the same as the old management
WWE: New hat, same great taste. Now with less rape™
Potentially* less
It’s sad cause it’s true.
but far more covering up for the sexual abusers
Oh no… WWE is following the playbook they use with most companies… WCW, then TNA during the Huksters prime time move, now AEW… it’s not out of the realm of possibility AEW does the same to WWE’s numbers, TK is a dirt sheet guy and dirt sheet guys love them some ratings.
Seriously, WWE passing them along to friendly reporters is no different than some companies feeding the friendly journalists stories for their PR, it’s wrestling, this nutbaggery happens, it’s a carnival business.
Ratings are still important to the TV industry, it’s how they set ad prices, which is how they make their money, they aren’t in the airing wrestling business, they are in the airing commercials business, never forget that, people may watch TV in other ways these days but most sports budgets come from these cable companies. WWE is the first to make a major leap to streaming but they kept relationships with USA and CW for now.
