WWE Hall of Fame big guns get NXT a small ratings bump

NXT’s ratings roll came to a stop last week. That’s probably one of the reasons WWE brought in four members of its Hall of Fame (Alundra “Madusa” Blayze, Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, Molly Holly & Road Dogg) for multiple segments rather than just having the one who runs the show each week (Shawn Michaels) announce the participants in the upcoming Deadline PLE’s Iron Survivor matches.

And it worked... or it at least led to small upticks in overall viewership and among 18-49 year olds. According to Showbuzz Daily, last night’s episode had an audience of 644,000 with a .13 rating in the key demo. Those are respectively 3% and 8% better than the previous week.

NXT finished 35th among cable originals, another improvement over Nov. 22. The first of TNT’s two NBA games (the Dallas Mavericks win over the defending champion Golden State Warriors) finished first with 1.5 million viewers and a .47 rating. That went head-to-head with WWE’s developmental show, but the top five were all sports-related and came from throughout the day.

Next Tuesday will be the Deadline go home. We’ll see if things continue going in the right direction for that show. In the meantime, here’s NXT’s audience and ratings share of the same demographic over the past year:

• Nov. 23 - 625K / .14
• Nov. 30 - 637K / .15
• Dec. 7 - 590K / .11
• Dec. 14 - 561K / .14
• Dec. 21 - 591K / .11
• Dec. 28 - 662K / .16
• Jan. 4, 2022 - 685K / .16
• Jan. 11 - 647K / .14
• Jan. 18 - 587K / .11
• Jan. 25 - 593K / .14
• Feb. 1 - 619K / .13
• Feb. 8* - 400K / .07
• Feb. 15* - 525K / .11
• Feb. 22 - 612K / .12
• Mar. 1 - 551K / .13
• Mar. 8 - 613K / .13
• Mar. 15 - 624K / .14
• Mar. 22 - 628K / .14
• Mar. 29 - 626K / .14
• April 5 - 631K / .14
• April 12 - 610K / .12
• April 19 - 569K / .12
• April 26 - 577K / .14
• May 3 - 661K / .13
• May 10 - 533K /.10
• May 17 - 601K / .14
• May 24 - 551K / .13
• May 31 - 534K / .12
• June 7 - 657K / .14
• June 14 - 612K / .12
• June 21 - 637K / .18
• June 28 - 570K / .11
• July 5 - 593K / .12
• July 12 - 582K / .14
• July 19 - 588K / .13
• July 26 - 600K / .13
• Aug. 2 - 649K / .15
• Aug. 9 - 597K / .13
• Aug. 16 - 723K / .17
• Aug. 23 - 678K / .14
• Aug. 30 - 676K / .15
• Sept. 6 - 684K / .16
• Sept. 13 - 728K / .15
• Sept. 20 - 688K / .15
• Sept. 27 - 660K / .16
• Oct. 4 - 625K / .13
• Oct. 11 - 737K / .15
• Oct. 18 - 676K / .18
• Oct. 25 - 716K / .15
• Nov. 1 - 670K / .13
• Nov. 8 - 664K / .15
• Nov. 15 - 663K / .17
• Nov. 22 - 624K / .12
• Nov. 29 - 644K / .13

* Aired on SyFy

If you missed any of last night’s show, we’ve got you covered with our live blog, review & video highlights.