I'll start off by bluntly stating that I completely disagree, and that I'd never expect Tasty to have such a knee jerk reaction to a show that's only three weeks old. At this point, ECW wasn't nearly as watered down as it would become. RVD was champion, he was working as champion, and the show was actually a rating's success. It wasn't until December to Dismemeber that the show really started to slip down the tubes.
NXT has received ratings in keeping with ECW, despite having bigger stars on it,
Well yeah, the show's only been on for three episodes. I'll wait much longer before I praise NXT's ratings.
and even more importantly, having publicity on Raw and Smackdown, something I've never seen for ECW in recent years.
Not exactly a fair comparison. The whole point of NXT is to introduce the WWE audience to the new breed of superstars. Meanwhile, the WWE made all attempts to separate the three brands, Raw, Smackdown, and ECW. Besides, ECW's Heavyweight Champion was making frequent appearances on Raw, working with the top two draws in the company at the time, Edge and John Cena. It wasn't as though ECW was barren from publicity.
NXT is certainly something different, but is it more entertaining than ECW? For me it probably is,
That's merely a judgement call on your part. Personally, I see NXT as a watered down version of Raw and Smackdown. At the very least, at its original state, ECW did offer something that at least something different to the Raw and Smackdown programming.
but that isn't so much the innovative nature of NXT that has done that, but the roster.
The only person I find myself giving a shit for on NXT is Daniel Bryan. Of course, he's the star, so I'll compare him to RVD, who was the star of ECW at its beginnings. At this point, RVD is better than Daniel Bryan. I would rather watch an RVD match than a Bryan Danielson match, and he draws more of a crowd than Bryan Danielson does. Either than that, NXT is really a one trick pony, and relies completely on that pony to gallop all the way home.
I think most of the rookies are more interesting than the likes of Vance Archer, and the pros are all guys that I like, so I am probably liking it more, but there's not much in it.
Again, you're going to have to be more specific. If we're comparing the shows in their time frames, ECW was better at this point in its origins than NXT is. You're referring to ECW programming that had become nothing like the original, and alienated people as being the "developmental league".
But what about you? Is NXT better than ECW or is it the dud that people thought it would be?
It's not a dud, parse, but it's not better than ECW was at this point in it's birth? Now, ECW as it was in its dying day? It'd be like comparing NXT to WCW programming in 2000 from eyes. Sure, it's better than the worst of a dying brand, but it certainly doesn't match what ECW was capable of.