So being a WWE fan and living in England is a pretty difficult thing, and I don't mean that because when people ask me what my interests are and I say wrestling they look at me like I just told them I have an elephant as a pet. Watching RAW is strenuous seeing as it is live from 1 am to 4am. Doing this means i'm knackered the next day and it puts me off watching Smackdown. Therefore for me and i'm sure a lot of other people in the UK I just watch short snippets of Smackdown from Youtube. But doing this I feel like i'm actually missing out. But now that Smackdown is moving to the USA Network on January 7th I've suddenly got an urge to start watching it at 1am like I do with RAW.
Smackdown used to be a great show. This isn't me saying that it's awful now. It's not great but it's not dreadful. However at certain points in recent history Smackdown has been more watchable than RAW. Most notably for me was 2009/10. Smackdown thrived this year with multiple interesting rivalries, most notably those which involved CM Punk. Punk did great work as a Heel against the likes of Hardy/Undertaker and as the leader of the Straight Edge Society. In 2009 I found myself regularly tuning in to Smackdown whether it be when it was broadcast in the morning or if I recorded it and watched it early in the morning.
Moving to USA Network means that the WWE have to put more effort into Smackdown. It's not a question of just fine tuning it. They have to pour a huge amount of effort into it. If they don't the USA Network will make their feelings clear. Remember, USA Network also broadcasts RAW which has been in a bit of a rating dump at the moment. Although in the past couple of weeks the ratings have started creeping up a bit. USA Network will expect the WWE to be able to replicate the success of RAW in the same way on Smackdown. This means more pressure on the Creative team. This isn't necessarily a bad thing however.
RAW is a three hour show. It shouldn't be. Anyone with half a brain knows that three hours for RAW is far too long and about half of that time is taken up by pointless segments and Advertisements. With Smackdown's move to the USA Network it means that the WWE Creative team need to focus more on WWE's "B" programme. This could result in the WWE returning RAW to two hours in order to ease the workload on the Creative team. All round this would be great. It means that not only would RAW return to two hours making everyone happy but there would be much more focused and developed content on both RAW and Smackdown.
I say all this and hope that RAW will be returned to two hours but I don't know whether WWE will see it that way. Maybe they see returning to two hours an admittance of their own shortcomings rather than an acceptance that they need to make a drastic change. No matter what happens though, Smackdown could become very interesting to watch. NXT was better than RAW in 2015. No doubt about that and will likely continue to be an excellent source of entertainment in 2016 but Smackdown may become the same. It's only a thought but it could be true. You never know with the WWE.
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