FOX Reveals SmackDown’s New Friday Night Home Will Be Temporary

SmackDown will officially move from USA to FOX in October. However, the Friday night slot saved for WWE‘s Blue Brand will not be permanent.

In a conversation with the Television Critics Association, FOX CEO Charlie Collier discussed his company’s $1 billion WWE move and revealed that SmackDown will hold the Friday spot for the “short term.”

Why FOX is already planning to move SmackDown is hard to say, but Gamespot speculated that due to WWE’s long pay-per-view weekends, they may need Friday nights for WrestleMania Axxess or WWE Hall of Fame inductions along with NXT event.

Friday night is a notoriously tough night for television shows, and even though SmackDown is more of a live sporting event, that won’t be an easy audience to maintain.

Right now, FOX uses a rotation of Last Man Standing, Hell’s Kitchen, and Masterchef Junior for Fridays. On average, that triumvirate of shows gets just over 3 million views on a Friday night. For USA on Tuesdays, SmackDown’s is good for about an average of 2.5 views per episode. With SmackDown moving to a bigger network, it’s not hard to imagine it doing comparable, if not better, numbers than the shows it will be ousting.

In SmackDown, Fox has a show that will run year round. For now, the show is two hours, but it could easily be bumped up the three if demand is high enough.

With so much time between now and October, there will be plenty of updates regarding WWE and FOX’s relationship. The are rumors of WWE stacking the Smackdown roster due to the big move, and that could happen as soon as April when they uncork yet another Superstar Shake Up.

Regardless of where FOX decides to permanently stick SmackDown, this is arguably the greatest opportunity WWE has ever seen. Wrestling is now on the verge of being a mainstream commodity, one that will be packaged and sold like a major sporting event. It’s taken decades but professional wrestling has shed its stigma and is now one of the healthiest industries in all of sport and entertainment.