By Jason Powell, Prowrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
WWE Smackdown is expected to move to Friday nights once the show begins airing on Fox in October 2019, according to TheWrap.com. It was reported earlier today by ESPN that WWE and Fox have agreed to a deal in principle to bring the Smackdown series to the broadcast network.
Powell’s POV: It’s possible that WWE will be reverting to its old model of taping Smackdown on Tuesdays and airing it on Fridays. WWE could adjust their schedule to air the show live on Fridays and then keep the Smackdown crew running house shows on Saturdays and Sundays, and perhaps continue with their current Monday live events. While it wouldn’t require much change for the wrestlers and producers who work the live events, it would create new challenges for the production crew in that they currently do back to back nights (and three consecutive nights on pay-per-view weeks). A shift to live shows on Fridays would create the added expense of sending the production crew out for separate trips twice each week and perhaps even keeping them on the road for four straight days when there’s a Sunday pay-per-view event. Of course, WWE is making a ton of money on this new deal so I guess I can’t rule out that they are willing to pay the added expenses or that they could even use multiple production crews. It likely comes down to whether Fox wants a live show or if they are content with the show being pre-taped.
All networks are moving towards live “event” programming. It would hard for me to believe that Fox is paying $200M+ a year for pre-taped programming, even if it is just a minuscule amount of people who read spoilers.
I agree. I assume it’s a live show.
the weekends I was growing up – kids from all over the neighborhood would get together in someone’s living room for an hour of wrestling. that one hour taped show lead to adults watching wrestling. I would think that one of the wrestling gurus would remember that scenario – and bring back the Saturday taped shows – in order to hook the kids which in turn will hook the kid’s parents right away – the kids when they grow up.