WWE Planning On Several Major Changes To Smackdown, NXT Ahead Of Their Premieres On USA, CW

-- WWE is in the early stages of ushering in a new era from a TV perspective, with sweeping changes affecting all three of their weekly shows - Raw, Smackdown and NXT. The blue brand premieres today on the USA Network after a five-year stint on Fox with NXT moving to CW taking place in October before Raw shifts over to Netflix in 2025. Fightfulselect.com is reporting that the company is looking at major changes to Smackdown and CW ahead of their premieres tonight and next month.

-- In case it wasn't obvious already, WWE is loading up both shows in order to make a splash reportedly bringing in some legends for tonight's episode of Smackdown and promoting several main roster talents for NXT on CW in October. Smackdown is also expected to get a new theme song soon - likely as early as tonight - and it is believed that the new song would be from a "legit artist", a bit of a swipe at def rebel, whose song WWE has been using for the last three years.

-- Another possible change that has been discussed internally is a change to the end of Smackdown. While it was on Fox, WWE often went off air at 9:58pm ET in order to not interfere with local news programming that would be running on Fox affiliate stations beginning at 10pm. With the move to the USA network, Smackdown now gets more flexibility though it's not clear if that means they could also be granted an overrun like USA had given Raw in past years. NXT meanwhile often goes past 10pm given USA's flexibility but with the move to CW, that is expected to stop and the show will end as scheduled.

-- With WWE loading up NXT by adding considerable star power, pushing Giulia's debut match and by promoting it on the road, officials are cautiously optimistic that NXT can generate their highest viewership since the famous episode that ran against AEW Dynamite last year when the latter moved to a special Tuesday airing.