As noted, Advertising Age published an article earlier this week looking at WWE and NBCU working together to attract new advertisers. With SmackDown moving to the USA Network in 2016, USA will increase their annual WWE content to 263 hours.
The article noted that viewership for RAW and SmackDown is down year-over-year 13% and 16%, respectively, while USA saw their viewership decline 17% in the last quarter.
We noted that SmackDown will serve as USA’s lead-in to new original series, starting with Colony. It should be noted that Colony will air on Thursday nights at 10pm, so SmackDown will remain in its current timeslot on Thursdays when it moves to USA. Every quarter, USA will debut a new series after SmackDown on Thursday nights.
