NXT’s Future On Wednesday Nights Could Be In Jeopardy Due To NBC Sports Decision

Some surprising news came on Friday when the Wall Street Journal reported that NBC Sports Network is shutting down at the end of the year. NBC will be migrating some of that network’s sports programming to the USA Network as a result. This move might come with an added impact on the world of professional wrestling due to the USA Network being home to WWE Raw and WWE NXT. While Raw is one of the USA Network’s signature, highest performing shows and would theoretically be in no danger, NXT could be forced to move time slots.

NHL hockey, English Premier soccer, Atlantic-10 college basketball, and NASCAR programming are expected to move over to the USA Network, and it could be the NHL which forces NXT to make a move and no longer air head to head with AEW Dynamite. Many of the NHL hockey games on NBC Sports Network air on Wednesday evenings, the current home to NXT.

The Wall Street Journal report notes that programming will start to migrate over to USA Network throughout this year, including NHL and NASCAR. Some content will continue to air on both networks until NBC Sports Network officially goes off the air. NBC is hoping that by shutting down the NBC Sports Network, an under-performing channel in the ratings, they can cut their losses there and boost USA Network, which is already a highly performing network, even more.

While the effect that these moves have on NXT remains to be seen, it will be a story to follow this year. NXT has consistently underperformed rival AEW in the ratings, and NXT was added to Wednesday nights on USA Network largely to go head to head with AEW to negatively impact their viewership and leverage with TNT moving forward (despite the company claiming otherwise).

Should NXT move nights, AEW Dynamite will certainly benefit. Without head to head wrestling competition, it would not be surprising to see Dynamite consistently start to average over 1 million viewers each and every week.