There is a lot of planning involved with any kind of move whether it be your apartment or a television show. That being said, the process of moving networks is always something that needs to be done carefully.
It was recently announced during the NBC Universal Upfronts that USA Network won’t be keeping SmackDown Live around after their current contract is up. This surprised a lot of fans but the fact is with Raw being so valuable at this point NBC Universal didn’t see the benefit of keeping the Blue Brand around.
But this leads some to wonder if Fox would still be interested if Raw wasn’t part of the deal. Dave Meltzer mentioned on Wrestling Observer Radio that just because NBC Universal wants to keep Raw doesn’t mean Fox is out of the running, they just might not have much of a place for WWE’s Blue Team (via Ringside News).
“They’ll get interested in SmackDown somewhere, it’s live programming […] Fox is interested in Raw still I can tell you that %100 it may just be USA isn’t interested in bidding for SmackDown, they are interested in bidding for Raw and we’ll see how this plays out. But the news in this is that they’re getting a big increase.”
There might be an issue with branding and keeping everything together. But if WWE’s two television properties need to be separated then there’s nothing they can do to stop it. After all, Raw and SmackDown have moved networks before.
Meltzer went on to say Fox wouldn’t want to put SmackDown on their main network. Therefore the possibility of SmackDown Live ending up on another Fox network where it might not be live and could possibly be preempted seems to be a likely scenario due to the fact some games that air on FS1 take place on Tuesdays.
Only time will tell what happens in this story but it looks like this situation is going to get more interesting before any final deal is made.
