8 months ago
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With Mercedes Mone's arrival at "AEW Dynamite: Big Business" widely anticipated by fans who follow the dirtsheets, Tony Khan chose not to announce Mone for the show officially, instead choosing an easter egg style of promotion that mirrored CM Punk's return to wrestling on the "First Dance" debut episode of "AEW Rampage" in 2021. Mone's debut also opened the show, just like Punk's did. But while these tactics may have helped fill TD Garden with a raucous crowd in Mone's hometown of Boston, they also resulted in what can only be seen as a ratings disappointment — according to Wrestlenomics, "Big Business" averaged a total viewership of 801,000 this week, up from last week's number by just 3%, while the coveted 18-49 demographic stayed entirely flat, with no movement from last week's 0.27.
While the overall numbers seemed to display a story of near-total stagnation, the quarter-hours tell a somewhat different tale. "Big Business'" best quarter-hour was its best — typical of "Dynamite," which benefits from a strong lead-in from "The Big Bang Theory" — but this week, one million viewers were tuned in for Mone's show-opening appearance and promo, a full 70,000 more than watched QH1 last week. After Mone's debut, however, viewership cratered, losing more than 100,000 viewers between QH1 and QH2 and dropping to 737,000 by QH4. Will Ospreay's promo and the subsequent Jay White vs. Darby Allin match picked things up slightly, but "Big Business" lost another 100,000+ viewers between the Chris Jericho/HOOK tag team match in QH7 and the main event singles match between Riho and Willow Nightingale in QH8, which only drew 627,000 viewers.
Due to a Nielsen error, viewership information on the overrun was not available and wasn't factored into the total average — Mone did end up returning to the show during the overrun, inserting herself into the storyline between Nightingale and Julia Hart. The tanking of the ratings following her initial segment has led some to suggest that fans didn't realize she was coming back for the end of the episode.
