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WWE to air on WGN America beginning in April

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oldvnewschool

The show will be called WWE Superstars.

It will air twice on Thursdays on 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm and on 11:00 am on Saturdays (CST).

I'm excited about the new show.

Maybe it will be more like the old WWF Superstars of Wrestling Program.
 
It'll be more along the lines of Sunday Night Heat, I think.
 
Only on WGN America...

oldvnewschool said:
The show will be called WWE Superstars.

It will air twice on Thursdays on 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm...(CST).
Click to expand...

It's actually Thursdays at 8 east/5 west and 11 east/8 west...only on WGN America.

;D
 
Time to bring back the good old fashioned squash matches with the dedicated jobbers!
 
No Nate...people like Steve Lombardi, a.k.a. The Brooklyn Brawler, were officially known as enhancement talent! ;)

Ah, the good old days of the late 80s/early 90s, when syndication was WWE's bread and butter!
 
KML-224 said:
No Nate...people like Steve Lombardi, a.k.a. The Brooklyn Brawler, were officially known as enhancement talent! ;)

Ah, the good old days of the late 80s/early 90s, when syndication was WWE's bread and butter!
Click to expand...
Back then, The WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) was known as WWF (World Wrestling Federation) back in the 80's and 90's. Syndication was WWF's Bread And Butter then while Cable/Satellite is WWE's Bread And Butter Today. ;)
 
Believe it or not, out of the 8-10 cable networks carried here on Mediacom in HD, WGN is one of them... I just don't understand that one. The Weather Channel in HD would make more sense.
 
One thing that has me wondering is will WGN America be finally available on cable in Chicagoland, rather than strictly dishes only? With the WWE under WGN's belt, I would think Tribune would finally wise up and make WGN-A available to Chicagoland cable, rather than keeping the "syndex-proof-version" model it employed the last 19 years.
 
Re: Only on WGN America...

JayR said:
oldvnewschool said:
The show will be called WWE Superstars.

It will air twice on Thursdays on 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm...(CST).
Click to expand...

It's actually Thursdays at 8 east/5 west and 11 east/8 west...only on WGN America.

;D
Click to expand...

With the continuation separation of WGN America from WGN, I wonder if WGN America will consider adding a West Coast feed? Not that I want them to...this is one of the few non-sports/news networks with relatively significant distriibution that is still single-feed (which makes them kind of unique.) I assume they will be airing the program twice to make up for the lack of a West Coast feed.

Also, I'm not sure if this has already been posted here, but GSN will be dropping its West Coast feed soon.
 
I've been wondering what the format of WWE Superstars on WGN. From what I understand, it will be taped on Mondays with Raw and Smackdown/ECW will be taped on Tuesdays. So will Superstars have Raw-only talent with occasional other brand wrestlers? Or will it be a recap show?
 
I should point out that the new Superstars will be WWE's second attempt at producing a show for WGN America; in the mid-'90s, they had "WWF Blast-Off" on Saturday mornings. It bombed!

And there's rumors that with MyNetwork TV dumping all original programming, Smackdown's next home may be syndication. If I was in charge of WWE TV programming, I would bring back the respective Raw and Smackdown recap shows "Bottom Line" and "Afterburn" to U.S. syndication (they're still being seen overseas).

But just like all other WWE programming these days, Superstars will be rated TV-PG. And that move definitely led to loyal WWF/E fans defecting to TNA, ROH (who finally has a TV deal...with HDNet; I wish it was Versus), or UFC.
 
johnnya2k6 said:
But just like all other WWE programming these days, Superstars will be rated TV-PG. And that move definitely led to loyal WWF/E fans defecting to TNA, ROH (who finally has a TV deal...with HDNet; I wish it was Versus), or UFC.
Click to expand...

That's hoo-ha on the TNA part. They still can't do much better than a 1.0 rating on Spike, even as they straight up recycle old WWE & WCW/NWO storylines (as well as talent).

WWE's shift to TV-PG programming was necessary as a publicly traded entertainment company marketing to kids and tweens. The move really hasn't hurt the storylines or the ratings that much, if at all. The dyed-in-the-wool fanbase still shows up and makes it one of cable's most reliable draws.
 
I think that WWE should take this opportunity with My's reorganization to take Smackdown away from My Net/Fox and move to Tuesday nights, live on SciFi or WGN, and then move ECW to Friday nights on SciFi, WGN, or syndication (perhaps with MyNet) or just drop it all together. With a second 2 hour live show, WWE may be able to regain some of the steam they had pumping while competing against TNT's WCW. I also think that at least one of these shows should be supervised by someone besides Vince McMann, that way one show would have a different feel and appear as competition. The way it is now, if you watch Raw the other shows just drag on and on lacking entertainment value.

Another possibility would be that if Fox were about to loose Smackdown, they might buckle and offer to put it on the mothership FOX network, with some type of WWE Heat recap show on weekends on FX.

Another thing, I know WWE has an On Demand channel for this, but wouldn't a 60, 90, or 120 minute "classics" show, pulling footage from the whole library, do well on "free" TV? They could use such a show as an infomercial for WWE On Demand and they wouldn't have the production deadlines they currently have with Smackdown.
 
poledo said:
Another thing, I know WWE has an On Demand channel for this, but wouldn't a 60, 90, or 120 minute "classics" show, pulling footage from the whole library, do well on "free" TV? They could use such a show as an infomercial for WWE On Demand and they wouldn't have the production deadlines they currently have with Smackdown.
Click to expand...

I'd definitely watch.

You could use a show like you described to promote both WWE On-Demand and their many DVD releases. Speaking for myself, it'd be great so see some of those old WCW Nitro & Thunder cruiserweight matches.
 
I watched the old Continental Championship Wrestling (Alabama territory) religiously back in the late 80's and usually watched Saturday night wrestling on WTBS. I also remember watching UWF, Championship Wresting from Florida, CWA (Memphis territory), GLOW, WCCW and whatever the local show was called (a young Bob Holley was the long running Heavyweight Champion and Kevin Sullivan was the lead bad guy). Most of these shows only stayed on the air for a year or two in Mobile.
Years later on I watched the first couple years of Nitro, starting with the first show live from a shopping mall, and eventually switched to Raw for a couple years (when they started beating Nitro in the ratings.) I also watched ECW, Friday Nights on the Sunshine network, but I don't know how I even found that show or how many years I watched it.
I don't watch much wrestling now except when everything else is in reruns. If they'd bring back the old "looser leaves town" match, wrestling might get interesting again.

I would be very interested in a classic show that had footage from the diverse WWE library. Such a show would take some work to produce, seeing as the story lines lasted for months back then and a single match would seem lost in a classic show without the proper buildup and promo clips. The promos made the shows back in the 80's, not the matches. When WWE signed with Viacom/The Nashville Network, I really expected a "classics" show would wind up on TV Land... a perfect fit, but instead Heat wound up on MTV??? I could have access to WWE On Demand, but I'm not willing to pay more than $2 a month for it. I think the going rate is $15 a month. I suppose that classic footage is making WWE more money on the PPV On Demand channel than they think they could make from advertising revenue on a regular TV show. That's hard to believe.
 
Re: WWE on WGN America

JayR said:
From PWNewsNow.com:

WWE To Move SmackDown To WGN America In Worst Case Scenario
Click to expand...

I'll bet you my black Resistol hat that WWE wants MyNetworkTV to stay alive. Moving the show to cable on Friday/Saturday nights wouldn't kill the show, but it would eliminate whatever 'equity' exists in stature with Raw. Even though the dual streams of their Monday show brings in the dollars, WWE has tremendous pride in having a show in primetime on broadcast television--and they'd hate letting that go.
 
Probably unrelated to the topic, but...................

I really don't like the way WWE took the old AWA logo and turned it into a t-shirt for John Cena.
" Hustle...Loyalty..Respect ? "
Whuddabout the respect for the AWA memories and talent that made it a name? Seems like Vinnie Mac will stoop at nothing for the buck.
Plus Vickie Guerrero's " Excuse me! ". Direct ripoff from Cyrus' intro on original ECW as he walked to the ring interrupting interviews with " Excuse me! "
Bah.
 
I agree on the whole AWA logo deal, but it's now Vinnie's property along with the video library.

I hate Vickie Guerrero when she does that.

I truly believe that WWE is gearing up to send Smackdown to WGN America if they see My Network TV isn't going to afford keeping WWE on the air.

My biggest feeling is that it will lose value anyway because now the show won't be on a real network anyway, but on a large syndicate group.
 
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