Wednesday Night Wars: WWE NXT Will Go Head To Head With AEW

Wednesday nights are about to get a lot more interesting in the world of professional [...]

By Ryan Droste

Wednesday nights are about to get a lot more interesting in the world of professional wrestling.

This week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter confirmed what has been speculated for months: WWE NXT will start airing on FS1, and the show will go head to head with AEW's new show on TNT.

The era of the Wednesday night wars has officially begun.

According to the Observer, WWE NXT will become a two hour show and will air live every week from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern on FS1. That's the say time slot that AEW will air on TNT.

What's not known of yet is how this will impact NXT's current Wednesday night, one hour show on the WWE Network. It's unclear if that show will be discontinued or continue on, bringing NXT's weekly time television time up to three hours.

The fact that NXT will now become a two hour live show also brings about speculation on whether the brand will start touring weekly or continue taping predominantly at Full Sail University. These questions should be answered in the coming weeks.

While WWE has not confirmed the news of yet, the Observer reports that the agreement was made with FS1 in late June or early July and FOX has started to inform some of their affiliates of the deal. WWE was reportedly set on bringing NXT to FS1, if possible, for quite some time but did not want to finalize a time slot until AEW announced their time slot, with the plan obviously being to run opposite of the new wrestling company.

WWE felt that making the NXT show on FS1 a live program was a necessity given AEW will air live as well. With AEW running large arenas around the country each week, one would think WWE would want to do the same with NXT so the show has the same kind of look, but that is speculation at this point. WWE does figure to use main roster stars occasionally on the new NXT on FS1 show to try to outshine the AEW broadcast. Though TNT is available in more homes than FS1, WWE has the star power advantage and will be able to promote the NXT program on the main FOX channel during SmackDown, as well as the USA Network during RAW.

A start date for the new NXT program should also become known in the coming weeks as WWE makes the official announcement. What is interesting is that Triple H was asked about the possibility of bringing NXT to FS1 during a Thursday conference call, just hours before the news broke in the Observer. He leaned hard into the narrative that they would not be counterprogramming AEW if it were to occur since NXT has aired on Wednesday nights for several years already. Instead, he painted a picture that AEW is counterprogramming NXT by running on Wednesdays.

"Contrary to what I've heard, because you hear people speculate and I've seen the conversations around FS1 or whatever it is with NXT and all that stuff, and then immediately, people come in with counterprogramming talk. We have content all over the place, and if people want to talk about counter-programming and bring that up in the conversation - like, Wednesday has been the home of NXT forever. Right?" Hunter asked. "That's where it's sat; it's been on our network on a Wednesday's time slot now forever.

"And when other people announce [their show] on Wednesday, you don't hear talk about counter-programming. You just hear, 'the announcement'. For us, everything is 'counterprogramming' and it's this and it's that - We plan things long in advance," Triple H continued. "We worry about doing our business and that's really what we worry about, so, [I've been giving] cryptic talk because there's a lot of thoughts and possibilities. And that's the great thing about it is that we can do just about anything, it is about what is best for WWE, and this business, and how does it affect the fans in the way that is the most meaningful to them."

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