This week marks a big change for World Wrestling Entertainment as Smackdown moves from Syfy to USA Network every Thursday night at 8pmET for two hours. It’s a substantial move by USA Network because it shows how committed they are to WWE programming. USA Network is a much bigger channel that the WWE audience is used to thanks to Monday Night Raw airing on the cable network for the majority of Raw’s 23 year run.
The move from Syfy to USA was announced in April 2015. They waited to make the move because from September to December, the Smackdown ratings take a hit due to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package. As an example of the difference, Smackdown on January 2, 2015 drew 2.5 million viewers in the US while Smackdown on December 3, 2015 drew 2.0 million viewers. Some episodes this year have gone under 2 million viewers as an average. Fifteen years ago in Smackdown’s first full year they were getting double that number.
Viewership numbers going down in the fall season is the same thing that happens with Raw every year. Then January hits and with the NFL regular season games no longer on Mondays and Thursdays, people are more willing to tune into WWE television as a form of entertainment they can rely on. Plus, with January to March being WWE’s busy season as they rumble to WrestleMania, fans know that typically the shows are better this time of year.
Meet Smackdown’s New Commentary Team
Regarding the commentary team, it was announced last month that well known MMA and boxing announcer Mauro Ranallo will be the voice of Smackdown. Lucky for him, he gets to use his real name too. He’ll be joined by legendary WWE Hall of Famer Jerry Lawler and Byron Saxton, according to PWTorch.
Why is Saxton on Smackdown when he’s already on Raw and NXT? That’s not known, but it could lead to him being removed from NXT when they do their first tapings of the year on Thursday. It’s not like Saxton is that good on commentary. He’s very average in every way, yet management must really like the guy to keep pushing him on their shows the way they do.
That change begs the question: Who did Booker T upset in management? The charismatic WWE Hall of Famer went from being an analyst on Raw to a Tough Enough coach to a Smackdown announcer and now to start 2016 he’s only on the Raw pre-show. That’s a major demotion.
What WWE should have done is put Corey Graves next to Ranallo and Lawler as an announcer because Graves is the best announcer WWE has right now. Graves would offer a fresh voice to the WWE Universe that may not watch him on NXT every week. He’d also work well with Lawler since Graves is very comfortable working as the heel announcer while Lawler is secure in his role as the veteran babyface.
Another idea for Smackdown could have been putting Renee Young in the commentary chair. She used to work with Ranallo on “Right After Wrestling” on The Score in Canada (now Sportsnet 360) before they were in WWE and they have great chemistry. Plus, she would offer a totally different perspective on things from Lawler, who is twice her age and is well past his prime.
The announce team on Smackdown will likely change because WWE management can’t make up their minds on who should be in those chairs. Over the past year, they went with so many different combinations with guys like Tom Phillips and Rich Brennan in the play by play chair while Jimmy Uso and Booker T took turns as analysts as well.
The First Show Should Be Great
The Smackdown move to USA Network has been pushed well by WWE over the past couple of weeks. They have released several clever commercials featuring their talent pushing the move to a new channel. It was also promoted heavily on this week’s Raw with two big matches announced for the show.
This week’s show will be taped tonight in Laredo, Texas. They’ve already announced two title matches: Dean Ambrose defends the Intercontinental Title against Kevin Owens and Charlotte defends the Divas Title against former friend Becky Lynch.
Both title matches should be great if they get more than 10 minutes of in-ring time. That’s what Smackdown needs to be – the show that has matches for the secondary titles and gives the talent time to perform. There’s so much talent on the roster that is capable of putting on memorable matches when given the chance.
In addition to that, John Cena will be on Smackdown this week. He isn’t on the show that often, so it’s a big deal. They pushed it a lot on last week’s Smackdown, but this week on Raw there was no sign of Cena and they didn’t really mention him being on Smackdown at all. That’s odd considering he has been WWE’s biggest full time star for the last decade.
If this show isn’t great with that lineup it would be a surprise. The problem is that WWE won’t make every Smackdown that good and the audience knows that, so they likely won’t be able to keep the momentum they get from it.
Establishing Smackdown As “Must See TV” Will Be Difficult
The reality with Smackdown is that most fans consider it a skippable show. Since it started airing on Thursday nights in August 1999 (it’s also been on Fridays), most online fans consume it by reading the spoilers on their favorite wrestling website on Wednesday mornings. Then they only watch the parts that look good or just skip over it because they know the results already. There were rumors that it might go live with the move to USA, but it’s not happening and will remain a taped show.
When WWE started the brand extension in 2002 and stuck with it for the next nine years, Smackdown actually mattered. In 2002/03 it was clearly superior to Raw due to the rise of Brock Lesnar, plus the likes of Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, Edge and Chris Benoit putting on great matches every week. In 2009, Smackdown saw another resurgence for the blue brand thanks to a really hot CM Punk/Jeff Hardy feud that summer.
It would be beneficial to Smackdown to do another brand extension, but it’s unlikely that WWE will go back to that route ever again. They want to have (most of) the big names on both Raw and Smackdown, so if you’re hoping for that to change, you shouldn’t get your hopes up too high.
Present day Smackdown has no identity on its own. It’s basically “Raw lite” and with Raw being a three hour show, that’s usually enough WWE for the average fan to consume every week.
What WWE must do is really push Smackdown during Raw because Raw is the “A” show and Smackdown is the “B” show. NXT is the best show of them all, but they have less viewers than those two. In order for Smackdown to become great again, they need to run some big angles on there, have more title matches (like they are doing this week) and maybe incorporate some NXT stars on there once in a while too. Why not? It could help.
The hope is that the move to USA Network will lead to more viewers for Smackdown. There’s no reason why viewer numbers should go down since it’s the hottest time of year for WWE, they are on the bigger network and there’s no NFL competition anymore. The company should be happy with the numbers that they get on USA.
That leaves us with one final question: Can WWE find the right mix to make Smackdown really important like it used to be? The guess here is no, but if you need two hours of solid wrestling in your life you could certainly do worse. This week’s episode will be awesome. Long term may be a different story. Here’s hoping that Smackdown becomes great again in terms of quality of show as well as number of viewers.
Does Smackdown’s move to USA Network excite you? Let us know in the comments.
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