It has been known since some time last year that Smackdown Live will be moving to the Fox Sports channel in October. With this being one of WWE’s biggest TV deal in it’s company’s history, new details regarding some of the changes to the show have emerged.
The show will be airing Friday nights instead of its usual Tuesday night time slot as of right now. However, the big news came from a report from F4WOnline. According to Dave Meltzer from a recent episode of Wrestling Observer Radio (h/t Comicbook), WWE is considering falling suit with Monday Night Raw by making the blue brand a three-hour show.
As fans have resented the fact that Raw would be 3 hours due to it being too long for fans to sit and watch, causing their excitement levels for the show to wane down. However, the WWE can really benefit from a financial standpoint because the third hour of Raw always earns the company 7 million dollars a year in revenue. As Smackdown could have a third hour, it is reported that the company can earn an additional $50 million dollars annually in revenue.
According to Meltzer, the third hour of the show might possibly be aired on a separate FOX network so it wouldn’t exactly copy Monday Night Raw‘s format of the show being continuously three hours long.
Meltzer also reported that 205 Live has not lived up to the level WWE had hoped it would and if they are filming that during that time frame, the third hour will most likely air on FS1 network. He also reported that this is because of FOX losing UFC to ESPN.
With the air date of the show on FOX drawing near, a lot of speculation have been growing about the changes that FOX will make to the show. Only time will tell how different Smackdown Live will be as a result of the new deal.
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