Shawn Michaels explains why he thinks NXT is successful.
Over the past couple of years, NXT's viewership and ratings, especially in the 18 to 49 demographic, have grown as the show moved to Tuesday nights, featured more main roster stars, and found an identity coming out of NXT 2.0.
For example, the demo rating for this week compared to the same week in 2022 was up 38.5 percent.
Asked by John Pollock of POST Wrestling about NXT's success in the demo during the NXT Deadline media call, Shawn Michaels replied, "My feeling is, a lot of it is the movement of the show. Our show moves very fast. I think that's something that resonates with that audience. I'll also say, it's a variety show, it's sports entertainment. We have something for everybody. Certainly, for me, is what I believe is resonating with that audience. It's quick moving, it's going from one scene to another. It's almost like scrolling on your phone, some of the segments we have. We can go from a Chase U segment to a backstage promo into the ring to a shot that happens from the Performance Center to an off-site with the Family at the restaurant. We have a lot of different atmospheric aspects to the NXT show. That's why I do say that we're the best two-hour wrestling television show on TV today because we have so much variety. That's something that being in Orlando at the Performance Center allows us that other people don't have. That's one of the things that resonates. Also, we have younger writers on our show. The old man is still making the final decisions, but at the same time, we're always trying to think of stuff that is natural and what is going on today. Certain emotions are there regardless of age group; anger, jealousy, joy, happiness, being hurt, any emotion you have under the sun doesn't really have an age group. If you can find yourself tapping into all of those emotions, that's what sort of attracts the 18 to 34 audience because I think they are a bit more focused on that aspect of television."
Elsewhere during the media call, Michaels commented on McKenzie Mitchell being released by WWE. You can find his full comments by clicking here.
Check out the lineup for NXT Deadline by clicking here.
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