By Joseph Currier and Dave Meltzer
While airing on the USA Network as part of WWE Week, NXT averaged 841,000 viewers for last night’s episode.
When it comes to first-run cable programming, some head-to-head comparisons were:
NBA on ESPN did 1,530,000 viewers
Erin Burnett on CNN did 1,081,000 viewers
Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC did 2,053,000 viewers
The Story on Fox News did 2,087,000 viewers
Vice News on HBO did 420,000 viewers
E! News on E! did 332,000 viewers
College basketball on ESPN 2 did 292,000 viewers
NFL Total Access on NFL Network did 196,000 viewers
Given the value of wrestling programming, that’s not a number that would seem to make USA try to add it to the package regularly since Tough Enough did better numbers and wasn’t renewed, though the 55-minute episode of NXT did air at 7 p.m. Eastern time instead of what is traditionally considered prime time for television.
NXT did a 0.27 rating in the 18-49 demo for the episode, which was 22nd for the night on cable in terms of original programming. The only other USA show to rank was the season three finale of Mr. Robot, with that averaging 454,000 viewers and doing a 0.19 rating in the demo.
For a comparison, Raw averaged 2.68 million viewers this week and SmackDown averaged 2.481 million. On Pop TV, which is less prominent than USA and is in fewer homes, Impact Wrestling averaged 226,000 viewers last Thursday.
The episode of NXT that aired on USA had Aleister Black vs. Adam Cole to decide who would advance to the upcoming fatal four-way number one contender’s match, Andrade “Cien” Almas vs. Fabian Aichner in a non-title match, and The Authors of Pain vs. Oney Lorcan & Danny Burch. Ember Moon and Peyton Royce’s non-title match was left off the USA version (likely due to time constraints) but was included in the usual WWE Network showing of NXT.