>>18885372Cable isn't about ranking or ongoing cord-cutting, it's about redundancy. If there's a racing league drawing 2 million viewers, and another league drawing 1 million viewers, and they have almost a complete overlap of fans, then the 1 million viewer league is never going to be paid like a "1 million viewer, #1 ranked show" should be paid.
That's the position Dynamite/Collision find themselves in with Smackdown back on cable - with their usual rating Ski Slope pattern, showing 100-150k viewers per show waking up from their naps and turning the channel - it makes it insanely difficult to isolate the intrinsic value of AEW programming. And the swearing, blading, blood everywhere stuff makes it to where AEW can never have a home on broadcast television.
