We have new data about old wrestling shows.

Some historical Nielsen data was shared with me. This data should also give us a clearer look than ever at historical TV ratings for wrestling and allow us to test long-held assumptions about wrestling television viewership.

So I figure we’ll start the most famous ratings competition in wrestling history. Up until now the Monday Night Wars ratings data I’ve seen is aggregated — presumably sourced from reports at the time in issues of the Pro Wrestling Torch of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter — on sites like prowrestling.fandom.com. (For what it’s worth, I ran a check against the table on the page linked here and only 72% [yeah, I calculated it] matches with the data directly from Nielsen.)

What TV ratings metrics are we talking about?

An issue that’s come to light as I’ve learned more about TV ratings over the years is that there are a vast variety of TV ratings metrics and it’s not always clear if we’re actually comparing the same metrics to one another. Indeed the metrics wrestling reporters have focused on over the years, probably largely based on what’s available to them, have changed.

Today, through the inadvertent education we received from Showbuzz Daily (RIP), we focus on total viewership (P2+) and P18-49 rating (specifically the “national” rating).

During the Monday Night Wars, the metric focused on was the “cable rating” — the percentage of households with the network that were watching.

The data underlying the chart below is now downloadable for everyone on wrestlenomics.com. (Scroll to the bottom of the table and click “Get the data”).

The charts below only show data for weeks where the shows were actually running head-to-head in their normal time slots.

So here’s the trend for the cable rating:

If we were just looking at the count of actual viewers watching, the trend isn’t much different. Nitro leads for 83 weeks from Jun 1996 to April 1998. The moment when Raw pulls away from Nitro, never to look back, beginning in November 1998, is about the same, one week later. And that shouldn’t be all that surprising since USA Network (which aired Raw for most of this timeline) and TNT (home of Nitro) were (and still are) in virtually the same number of households.

But what if we measured Raw vs. Nitro by looking at the almighty ad demo, P18-49, that was a sensitive subject during the later Wednesday Night War? Again, there isn’t a big difference. Nitro’s mid-1996 to mid-1998 streak is a little longer this way, 85 weeks.

Charted below is the P18-49 rating we’re familiar with today which indicates viewership as a percentage of people 18 to 49 in TV households.

But what about the age of the shows’ audiences? There were big differences. Raw basically always had a younger audience than Nitro. Nitro’s median viewer was in their late 30s when the show debuted in September 1995 and got younger as the show’s popularity grew. Like ratings trends we often see today, the show got older as viewership decreased.

Raw meanwhile had a typical viewer in their late 20s or early 30s, until 1997 when the age of the audience descended throughout the Attitude Era, bottoming out in the early 20s, then aging back up toward the mid-20s with the beginning of the year 2000.

The Monday Night War was a little more competitive with young adults aged 18 to 34. Raw ended Nitro’s streak (81 weeks) a few weeks earlier with this age group and it took about a month longer for Raw’s unanswered streak to begin.

Kids favored Raw throughout the timeline more than older age groups. Nitro’s longest streak with people aged 2 to 17 was just 17 weeks from Sept. 8 to Dec. 29, 1997.

And with this age group, the ratings competition started out with Raw winning 23 of the first 24 weeks.

With teenage boys, Raw led the first 43 weeks of the war. Nitro sustained a streak no longer than eight weeks, from Sept. 8 to Oct. 27, 1997. Nitro had a nine-week stretch from Dec. 16, 1996 to Feb. 17, 1997 with eight wins and one tie.

With older viewers, Nitro never really lost. Nitro led for 149 of 150 weeks from Jan. 1996 to May 1998 with viewers 50 or older. Raw’s longest streak with P50+ was ten weeks from Jun. 26 to Sept. 18, 2000, but Nitro came back with an 11-week streak later that fall.

With the oldest viewers we’ll look at here, Nitro decisively won the final night on Mar. 26, 2001.

The female-male split for the two shows was roughly similar, about 70% male and 30% female, throughout the five-and-a-half period.

Wrestlenomics is not affiliated with or licensed by Nielsen.