Note on Smackdown’s Fox timeslot
When SDLive moves to FOX on October 4th, its new timeslot on Friday nights will apparently be TEMPORARY!
From Comicbook: In a conversation with the Television Critics Association, FOX CEO Charlie Collier discussed his company’s $1 billion WWE move and revealed that SDLive will hold the Friday spot for the “short term.”
Why FOX is already planning to move SDLive 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 million 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 SDLive, 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.
(The Spotlight)
