Aew female roster tv#

On the other hand, star development is partly a self-fulfilling prophecy: stars cannot be developed without sufficient opportunity. And viewers are especially important, it will be argued, amid weekly head-to-head competition with NXT. It may be pointed out that the 2 instances when women fully occupied one of the key quarter-hours in which viewers are normally gained, viewers were lost. It might be contended the company’s women’s roster - especially in its current state, hindered by injuries of Britt Baker and Kris Statlander and by Covid-related limits on international travel - lacks star power and talent depth.

Aew female roster tv#

Either AEW’s women aren’t TV attractions because they’re not put in a sufficient position to do so or they’re not put in a position to do so because it’s judged ahead of time they won’t get over or the truth is somewhere on the spectrum between those alternatives. This study might stir but probably won’t settle debates about AEW’s presentation of women. It’s notable that November 6 and July 8 are nearly at opposite extreme ends of the chronology of this data set. In the 2 instances where appearances of women made up the entire quarter-hour, (Q5 on November 6 and Q5 on July 8), viewers were lost in a quarter (as shown earlier) usually gains viewers. In the other eight, women appeared in part of the quarter along with appearances from men. Of those 11, there were just 2 instances where women entirely occupied the quarter-hour. Of those 114 instances, AEW’s women’s roster appeared in 11 of those quarters (or 10%). It’s apparent from these tables women appear in Q1, Q5, and Q8 more often on NXT than on AEW Dynamite.įor AEW, we’re looking at 114 instances of Qs 1, 5, and 8.

Here’s what Q8 appearances look like beginning with the March 18 episode through July 29.

Some Q8 appearances for NXT include episodes that had an overrun, so Q8 wasn’t the last quarter of the program, but Q9 was. What that said, who’s appeared most often in Q1, Q5, and Q8?

AEW clearly looks at minute-by-minute data (and WWE probably does too) but it’s doubtful wrestling companies will allow minute-by-minute data, barring favorable snippets, to reach the public. Ideally, we’d like to be studying the minute-by-minute data for a better understanding. Promos and angles are often less than 15 minutes long. Matches especially often overlap multiple quarter-hours. The labels are merely derived from text descriptions of each quarter from reports in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter.įurther, quarter-hours offer some enticing detail we might use to get insight into which stars are driving viewership, but quarter-hours do not neatly organize segments of a wrestling program. The labels may not account for the appearance of every person who appeared in a given segment. This study will also be hindered by the nature of the labels themselves. In all, we’re looking at 38 episodes of each program. How often are women featured in these segments (Q1, Q5, and Q8) for either program? The limits of this dataĪs of this writing, I’m missing segment labels for the first month of each program (episodes on October 2, 9, 16, 23, 30), so this study will not include data associated with those 5 weeks’ episodes, but will include all programs from November 6 to July 29, excluding December 25 (when there was no episode of Dynamite). The 5th quarter opens the 2nd hour of the program, perhaps as viewers turn away from other programs or activities that have ended at the previous hour. More concretely, t he 8th and 5th quarters are the only two segments that are actually likely to gain viewers. By its very placement at the end of the program the match or whatever content may be promoted throughout the show, and may be used to “anchor” viewers’ attention, driving them to stay tuned during the segments leading up to the end of the show. The 8th quarter is perceptibly prestigious because it’s the show closer. To contrast, NXT has more often put women in these key segments, including the final “main event” 8th quarter.

The 1st, 5th, and 8th quarter-hours are arguably the most important segments of either two-hour program, AEW Dynamite and WWE NXT.Īll Elite Wrestling’s roster of women haven’t main evented any of the 45 episodes in the history of the company’s flagship program, Dynamite, which airs Wednesdays on TNT, head-to-head against WWE NXT on the USA Network.