Wednesday nights on TNT belong to AEW Dynamite. The show has been airing at 8 pm on Hump Day since its inception in October of 2019.
That will change in the new year. Dynamite will move to TBS and there are likely more than a few Turner Sports executives that will breathe a sigh of relief.
With professional wrestling airing at 8 pm, that has meant that TNT cannot start its Wednesday hockey coverage until 10 pm on the East Coast. It is a strategy that has most certainly impacted ratings in a negative way.
Sports Media Watch looked at the seven late-night NHL broadcasts TNT has delivered since the hockey season began. They are averaging around 235,000 viewers. That number is the result of losing a large portion of the audience for AEW Dynamite. It is also a smaller audience than TNT’s pregame show is drawing on those nights.
A game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Seattle Kracken was the high watermark last month, drawing an average audience of 373,000 people. On the whole though, the numbers have fallen far below 300,000 viewers. On multiple occasions, the late-night game failed to deliver even 200,000 viewers.
Once wrestling moves to TBS, TNT will have NHL doubleheaders on Wednesday nights. The lead in audience for the 10 pm window will not be as large, but going from one hockey game to another is certainly a better fit. That will likely result in better audience retention throughout the night.
