Is WWE Planning To Move SmackDown Away From Friday?

The WWE SmackDown is heading to USA Network and a new report has revealed if the company plans to air when the show airs.

In the new era of WWE led by Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, change is happening all the time as the company tries to move ahead in a different reaction from how things were done in the past.

There will be major changes to the company’s main television shows. Smackdown will be going to USA Network in the fall while NXT will move to The CW and Raw is heading to Netflix in January 2025.

It was announced by NBC Universal earlier this week that WWE Smackdown will be moving to USA Network on September 13th. Currently, Smackdown airs on FOX since October 2019, which means they are wrapping up the five-year run on Fox a few weeks earlier than expected.

WWE SmackDown Expected To Remain A Friday Night Show

As for Smackdown’s future, it was reported by Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that Smackdown will likely remain a Friday night show. Meltzer went on to criticize that decision.

“We had been told the plan was to keep Smackdown on Fridays on USA, but this makes no sense at all for either the network or the promotion. USA will have no other show that will do close to the numbers of Smackdown, and being on Friday easily costs it 20 percent or more in viewership.

While it will do better than it did on Fridays when it was on FS 1, where it routinely did worse than AEW (I don’t at all anticipate that happening), but on Friday it won’t be helping the station as a whole, or WWE for that matter, nearly as much as on any other night of the week except Saturday which is maybe a worse night because of the heavier sports competition.”

“They are paying slightly more money than they were paying for Raw, only getting two hours instead of three (unless that changes) and I’d expect easily a 20 to 30 percent drop in viewers for those two hours as what they were getting for three.”

During Smackdown’s 25-year run on television, they have moved around a few times in terms of days of the week. It started out as a Thursday night show, moved to Fridays, then had the “Smackdown Live” run in 2016, and went back to Fridays on Fox in October 2019. Things could change again, but based on the above report, it appears as though “Friday Night Smackdown” will continue to be the name of the show.