and
Chris Jericho speaking in October 2019 about the creation of AEW Dynamite following the airing of the first episode The American
professional wrestling promotion
All Elite Wrestling (AEW) was launched in January 2019. In addition to filing trademarks for the promotion's name, several other trademarks were filed at the time, including Tuesday Night Dynamite, presumably a name for a television show. In June 2019, AEW filed an additional trademark for Wednesday Night Dynamite, leading to many sources believing the show would air on Wednesday nights under this name. On May 15, 2019, AEW and
WarnerMedia announced a deal for a weekly prime-time show airing
live on
TNT, the former broadcaster of
World Championship Wrestling (WCW). They would also stream live events and
pay-per-views (PPV) on
B/R Live in the United States and Canada. In April, veteran commentator
Jim Ross confirmed the show would be a weekly two-hour show. During AEW's
Fight for the Fallen event, AEW wrestler
Chris Jericho revealed the show would begin airing in October. On July 24, AEW announced the show would premiere on Wednesday, October 2, and would broadcast from the
Capital One Arena in
Washington, D.C.; the show sold out within 3 hours of tickets going on sale. AEW President and
Chief Executive Officer Tony Khan said that they chose to air the show on Wednesday nights instead of Tuesday nights because TNT airs the
National Basketball Association (NBA) on Tuesday and Thursday nights, and to prevent counter-programming against the
National Football League (NFL)'s
Thursday Night Football, as the Khan family also owns the
Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team. In August 2019,
WWE announced that it was moving their
WWE Network show
NXT to the
USA Network and expanding the program to a live, two-hour broadcast in the same timeslot as AEW's upcoming show.
NXT premiered on USA on September 18, two weeks before
AEW's broadcast debut on TNT. On August 30, the day before AEW's PPV
All Out, TNT aired a one-hour special called
Countdown to All Out at 10pm
Eastern Time (ET), which averaged 390,000 viewers.
, Battle of the Belts, and some of its pay-per-view events. Dynamite
utilized a different set when Rampage
was held in a different city or when the arena was not standard size. This set design returned for Dynamite''s 200th episode on August 2, 2023. Like they had done for each of their PPV events, AEW began a "Road to"
YouTube series on September 4 entitled
The Road to AEW on TNT to build anticipation for the debut broadcast of the show. On September 19, 2019, the show's name was revealed as
Dynamite. A two-hour preview show called
Countdown to All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite aired on October 1 at 8pm ET; it averaged 631,000 viewers. On October 2, 2019,
Dynamite debuted on TNT which averaged 1.409 million viewers, which made it the largest television debut on TNT in the past five years. Also on October 2,
NXT would make their two-hour debut on USA Network (the previous two episodes featured the first hour on USA with the second hour on the WWE Network), and they averaged 891,000 viewers.
Dynamite beat out
NXT in viewership and more than doubled its competition in the key adults 18–49 demographic, scoring 878,000 viewers compared to
NXTs 414,000. This would also mark the beginning of the "
Wednesday Night Wars". Prior to and after the episode,
dark matches were filmed to air on AEW's YouTube show called
Dark, which began airing on the following Tuesday (except before PPV events, where the episodes aired Fridays). Despite AEW's initial attempts to avoid conflicts with the NBA games, AEW had to run
Dynamite on Thursdays, and even on a Saturday, due to the
NBA playoffs.
Dynamite was the first wrestling show to air on TNT since the final episode of
WCW Monday Nitro on March 26, 2001. Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic that began in March 2020, which caused restrictions for live events around the world, AEW ran
empty arena shows from March 18–25 and again from May 6–August 19 from
Daily's Place in
Jacksonville, Florida, and taped six weeks of shows from March 31 to April 2 from One Fall Power Factory in
Norcross, Georgia, AEW's
de facto training facility. During these broadcasts, AEW used their employees and other in-ring talent to serve as the live audience for matches when they were not involved in matches or other on-air segments. AEW later began allowing more family and friends of essential personnel to attend, and on August 27, 2020 (moved to Thursday because of the NBA playoffs), AEW resumed live audiences from Daily's Place, though to a limited capacity of 10–15% of the venue. During the pandemic, in order to allow more time off, AEW often taped two weeks of shows in two days (live Wednesday, then a taping Thursday), which allowed wrestlers a week off. This procedure also allowed AEW to pre-tape
Thanksgiving and
Christmas shows in advance using the format. AEW then began running shows at full capacity of Daily's Place in May 2021. Also in May, AEW announced that they would be returning to live touring, beginning with a
special episode of
Dynamite titled
Road Rager on July 7, in turn becoming the first major professional wrestling promotion to resume live touring during the pandemic. Road Rager was also the first in a four-week span of special
Dynamite episodes called the "Welcome Back" tour, which continued with the two-part
Fyter Fest on July 14 and 21 and concluded with
Fight for the Fallen on July 28. In regard to the addition of
Rampage on TNT in August 2021, WarnerMedia had asked Khan if he would rather expand
Dynamite to three hours, but he rejected the notion, stating that he did not want to run
Dynamite for that length as he really wanted that third hour as a separate show on a different night. He also claimed that
Rampage would not be a secondary show to
Dynamite, and that it would be its partner or its equivalent. He further said that
Dynamite and
Rampage would be AEW's core properties, while their YouTube shows,
Dark and
Elevation, would be their peripheral properties, essentially their
developmental programs. It was announced on October 25, 2021, that
Dynamite would start airing live from coast to coast starting with the October 27 episode (the show's return to Wednesday nights after two weeks due to
TNT's coverage of the NHL). This lasted until
Dynamites move to TBS. On January 5, 2022,
Dynamite moved from TNT to
TBS, marking the first professional wrestling program to air on TBS
since 2001.
and Battle of the Belts''. In May 2023, AEW confirmed another television program,
Collision, to premiere that June on TNT (
Dark and
Elevation were also canceled, with
Rampage shifting to featuring developing talent). Prior to
Collisions official announcement, it had been speculated that with the addition of
Collision, AEW would do some form of a roster split, similar to WWE's
brand extension, in which part of the roster would only perform on
Dynamite, while the other part would be on
Collision. In an appearance on the
Barstool Sports Rasslin' podcast with Brandon Walker on June 13, Khan said that there would not be a hard split where wrestlers would exclusively appear on only one program. Instead, he said some wrestlers would be featured on certain shows, but there could be opportunities for storylines to cross between them. He also confirmed that the
title holders would be the champions for all of AEW's programs.
and Ring of Honor Wrestling, and was also used for Rampage'' until its cancellation. On March 23, 2025, AEW announced a special episode of
Dynamite titled
Spring BreakThru, scheduled for April 16, 2025, at the
MGM Music Hall at Fenway in
Boston, Massachusetts. This will be the 289th episode of
Dynamite, making it the longest-running prime time weekly pro-wrestling program in
Turner Sports history, surpassing
WCW Monday Nitro, which had a total of 288 episodes that aired on TNT from September 1995 to March 2001. ==Special episodes==