AEW Dynamite has had a pretty, well, dynamite run when you consider this milestone: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 will mark the 289th Dynamite episode, making AEW’s flagship program the the longest-running weekly primetime pro-wrestling show in TNT or TBS (its on TBS) history.
What are we really saying with that mouthful of qualifiers? Tony Khan’s main AEW series has now officially lasted longer than Ted Turner’s WCW Monday Nitro. And that’s noteworthy.
You remember WCW Monday Nitro, don’t you? Nitro went head to head with WWE’s Monday Night Raw in an era pro-wrestling fans refer to as the “Monday Night Wars.” And as former Nitro showrunner Eric Bischoff will never let us forget, for 83 weeks, it was WCW over what was then WWF on the Nielsen TV ratings sheets. Unfortunately for Bischoff, it didn’t last. Though AEW never got there, it has clearly carved a nice niche out for itself as WWE’s first legitimate competitor since Vince McMahon bought out WCW, putting Monday Nitro out to pasture.
Khan won the far smaller and shorter-lived Wednesday Night Wars when, in April 2021, WWE flinched and shifted its minor-league programming NXT from Wednesday to Tuesday nights.
“It’s amazing to me,” Khan, the All Elite Wrestling owner and son of Jacksonville Jaguars billionaire owner Shahid Khan, told The Hollywood Reporter on reaching No. 289. It is the manifestation of a lifelong pro-wrestling fanatic who not only consumed WCW from age 8 but preferred it to the mighty WWF/E for “the bulk of the [next] decade.”
For all intents and purposes, AEW is WCW reincarnate. And its founder has had multiple reasons to run the ropes in victory laps lately. In October 2024, Khan not only extended his Turner deal, he expanded it to streaming. AEW finally made it to Max via live simulcasts of its televised shows (for U.S. audiences). They’re also available on-demand.
AEW’s TBS/TNT viewership has not “at all” been “cannibalized” by streaming, Khan said. (While that’s not exactly true, the declines have been pretty minimal.) Not that even Khan has the full picture as to how many people are watching his shows: Warner Bros. Discovery keeps its Max streaming data “close to the vest,” Khan said. Still, he’s heard AEW Dynamite is “one of the top shows on Max.”
It’s been “a seamless transition” into AEW’s streaming era, Khan said.
Perhaps not the part where it took five years to make it there, where cord-cutters could finally consume AEW. WWE, meanwhile, has been streaming since 2014 on WWE Network, now a part of Peacock. WWE’s flagship weekly show Raw is now a Netflix original, and outside of the U.S., all WWE televised programming is now on Netflix.
A complete rebuild of the Max platform that launched in May 2023 made live sports on Max possible — or at least, tolerable.
“The technology has been great,” Khan said. “The Max stream looks great.”
Importantly, the expansion of the media rights deal also made Max the SVOD destination for AEW pay-per-view events. They’re available on a true pay-per-view basis on Amazon Prime Video.
Khan believes he’s found the sweet spot in terms of PPV count; AEW currently is at nine per year, but Khan could see it going up to 10. For now, nine is “a great number,” he said.
Khan credits his TV tag-team partner, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, for much of AEW’s growth. Zaslav “took interest in AEW” from “the very beginning,” Khan said. And he’s given them “great opportunities to grow,” like the June 2023 addition of Saturday Night Collision on TNT, which Khan says was Zaslav’s idea.
“They’ve been so good to us,” Khan said. “I want to stay here for life. I want to be on TBS and TNT forever.”
And Max, presumably.
AEW Dynamite airs live on TBS and streams live on Max Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
#AEW #Dynamite #Passes #WCW #Nitro #Episodes
