[Deconstructing the Moveset] Friday night? Saturday night?

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Smacking Smackdown! to Saturday?

What’s going on here?

Okay, Friday night Smackdown!, I understand that much.

UPN is choosing to air re-runs of “Eve” and “Cuts” until their new show “Everyone Hates Chris” goes on the air. That’s the new Thursday night line-up. Since the WWE is on UPN’s network, they have to abide by the rules like the rest of the shows do. This is for another year. Approximately 50 more Smackdown!s on Friday nights.

Why? Well, UPN’s website calls Smackdown! “appointment viewing”. To get a better idea of what “appointment viewing” is, we’ll also look at another example. Next year, Monday Night Football moves to ESPN from ABC, still within the Disney family, but it moves from network to cable. The NFL is banking on viewers not caring what TV station the game is on.

Football fan: Wait a second, Monday Night Football isn’t on ABC? My world has ended! The is teh suck! (spelling “mistake” intentional n00b)

Mom: It’s on ESPN

Football fan: Woot!

It doesn’t matter to the football fan what channel it’s on. ESPN hopes that by spending their $1.1 billion dollars on that program, they will increase their ratings and subscribers and eventually advertising dollars. The NFL hopes that their brand name will draw viewers, and their numbers stay up so they can continue to demand over a billion dollars a year to broadcast one game a week nationwide.

So UPN hopes that switching Smackdown! to Friday’s, it won’t decrease the ratings, because a loyal WWE fan will watch WWE programming no matter what time it’s on. There are two ways of lookig at this…

UPN is putting a lot of trust in the WWE brand name, and more importantly the Smackdown! brand name. Enough trust that by moving it, no one will notice that it moved. They’ll simply adjust their television watching schedule.

The other way of looking at this is simply that UPN has lost faith in the WWE Smackdown! brand name. And they think t hat their other shows can make them more money on Thursday nights.

Well, I’m home Friday nights sometimes, I might be able to catch a “live” taped Smackdown! now and again. It’ll be harder during baseball season when I’ll want to watch Yankees games. Wait a second, doesn’t UPN air Yankees games Friday nights? They air Sox games in Boston on UPN on Friday nights too.

So now I have to watch “Friday Night Smackdown!” on Saturdays? WONDERFUL. I’m pretty sure this is why I let my tivo box handle all the taping and I watch the show when I have a chance.

It’s going to be hard to stay out of the spoilers when there are 4 full days between when they tape the show and when it airs.

Let’s take the premiere of Smackdown! this Friday or Saturday depending on where you’re from (does it still air Tursdays internationally?). It was cut in half becuse of the Hurricane relief. Hey, no complaints here, I support supporting other people. But then NY postpones BOTH because of the Red Sox vs. Yankees game. Now even though it’s being delayed the etra day AND an hour, they STILL won’t broadcast the whole show. What a mess.

I for one, can’t wait until September 2006 and Smackdown! moves to another network. Preferably on Thursdays again.

Correction: The Bashams are related, but not brothers liek they are implied on TV.