WWE SmackDown
WWE SmackDown, also known as Friday Night SmackDown or simply SmackDown, is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE. It currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on USA Network in the United States, and in most international markets on Netflix. The show features characters from the SmackDown brand, to which WWE wrestlers are assigned to work and perform. SmackDown debuted on August 26, 1999 and is considered to be one of WWE's two flagship programs, along with Monday Night Raw.
Originally launched as a complementary second show to Raw, SmackDown became further distinct after the WWE brand split in 2002, representing the company's talent in the SmackDown brand roster. It has been taped in and broadcast from over hundreds of arenas and cities throughout twelve countries, mostly in the United States but also in Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Prior to switching to its current live format, taped episodes premiered a few hours or up to a day earlier in certain countries outside the United States due to time differences.
SmackDown! began on the broadcast network UPN in 1999 and was initially broadcast on Thursday nights. The show moved to Friday nights on September 9, 2005, and began airing on The CW in September 2006, after the merger of UPN and the WB, before later moving to MyNetworkTV in October 2008. On October 1, 2010, SmackDown moved to cable network Syfy, and eventually returned to Thursdays on January 15, 2015. The show then moved to the sibling USA Network on January 7, 2016, and later that year, beginning on July 19, SmackDown began broadcasting live on Tuesday nights. SmackDowns move to Fox on October 4, 2019 marked the show's return to Friday nights and over-the-air broadcast television. On September 13, 2024, the show returned to USA Network. As of 2024, SmackDown is the most viewed television show on Friday nights in the United States. Smackdown! has also been broadcast globally on other networks since it first began. The WWE Network ceased operations in the United States on April 4, 2021, with all content moved to Peacock which now has all previous episodes of SmackDown.
History
Early years (1999–2002)
WWF SmackDown! first appeared on April 29, 1999, using the Raw is War set as a single television special on UPN. On August 26, 1999, SmackDown! officially debuted on UPN as a weekly, two-hour, primetime show, marking the debut of WWF professional wrestling on broadcast TV. As a second WWF show complementing Raw, Smackdown! increased the exposure to the company's superstars and the storylines and its airing on the UPN network expanded the accessibility of WWF television to audiences without a cable subscription. Smackdown! was also conceived to compete against World Championship Wrestling 's Thursday night show, Thunder, and like Thunder it was recorded on Tuesdays and then broadcast on Thursdays.Smackdown! quickly became UPN's most watched show and is credited for saving the network. The show had a viewership of about 6.5 million as of late 1999, almost as many as the WWF's flagship show Raw. The new WWF show was so popular that WCW moved Thunder to Wednesdays so that it would not compete directly. However, some advertisers pulled after citing what they thought was the show's overly crude nature on broadcast television, and combined with a Parents Television Council campaign led to bad publicity for WWF. On November 30, 1999, Vince McMahon announced changes that will lead to "less aggression, less colorful language, less sexuality" on Smackdown!.
Throughout the show's early existence, The Rock routinely called SmackDown! "his show", in reference to the fact that the name was derived from one of his catchphrases, "Layeth the Smack down".
Brand extension (2002–2009)
In March 2002, WWF implemented the "brand extension", under which Raw and SmackDown! would have separate rosters of performers that are exclusive to their respective programs and events, and be positioned in-universe as competing "brands".In the 2004–05 season, SmackDown! had an average viewership of 5.1 million viewers, making it UPN's second-highest-rated series behind America's Next Top Model. With the cancellation of Star Trek: Enterprise, SmackDown! moved into its former timeslot on Friday nights for the 2005–06 season, beginning September 9, 2005. WWE subsequently announced that the show would be renamed Friday Night SmackDown! to emphasize the new scheduling.
In January 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros. Entertainment announced that UPN and The WB would merge to form a new network known as The CW that fall. As part of the announcement, The CW announced that it would renew Friday Night SmackDown! for two more seasons as part of its launch schedule—which drew from the strongest programs of its two predecessors. On September 22, 2006, Friday Night SmackDown! aired its first ever episode on The CW.
The CW declined to renew SmackDown, resulting in the series being picked up in October 2008 by MyNetworkTV, a second new network that had been formed by Fox Entertainment Group to take on former UPN and WB affiliates who were not selected to join The CW. Retaining its previous Friday-night time slot, the season premiere of SmackDown on MyNetworkTV was the highest-rated program in that night on the network, with 3.2 million viewers. On March 20, 2009, SmackDown celebrated its 500th episode.
Move to Syfy and USA Network (2010–2019)
On October 1, 2010, as part of a new broadcast deal with NBC Universal, SmackDown moved to Syfy, retaining its Friday night timeslot. Prior to this premiere of SmackDown, Michael Cole hosted a "pre-game" show. The move saw Syfy paying close to $30 million for the show as opposed to the $20 million paid by its former network MyNetworkTV.During the August 29, 2011 episode of Raw, WWE dissolved the brand extension, thus allowing performers to appear on Raw and SmackDown at any given time without restriction. The October 14, 2011, episode made SmackDown the second-longest-running weekly episodic television series of American television history. On January 18, 2013, SmackDown celebrated its 700th episode.
On October 10, 2014, SmackDown celebrated its 15-year anniversary. To help celebrate the 15th anniversary, Stephanie McMahon came out first, then Laurinaitis and Long, respectively, the latter of which kept one-upping each other for the main event of the night until McMahon decided to keep the 15-man tag team match that Long suggested, on the condition Laurinaitis and Long be the captains of each team like at WrestleMania XXVIII. Long's team won the match. On December 16, 2014, SmackDown aired a live 800th episode special on Syfy's sister channel USA Network, SuperSmackDown Live!, featuring a main event between Dolph Ziggler and Seth Rollins.
In January 2015, SmackDown returned to a Thursday time slot. The return to Thursday nights was expected to help attract a younger audience to Syfy, as well as more premium advertising dollars from marketers, who tend to spend more to promote their products, especially film releases, on the night as consumers head into the weekend. The last SmackDown airing on a Friday night had 2.43 million viewers with a 0.7 share. On January 7, 2016, SmackDown moved to USA Network, remaining on Thursday nights. With the move, all top three WWE programs—Raw, SmackDown and Tough Enough—would air on the same network for the first time ever.
On May 25, 2016, as part of the re-implementation of the brand extension and split between Raw and SmackDown, it was announced that SmackDown would move to Tuesday nights and be broadcast live. On the July 11, 2016 episode of Raw, Vince McMahon named Shane McMahon the commissioner of SmackDown. Then next week on Raw, Daniel Bryan was revealed as the new SmackDown General Manager. On July 22, 2016, general manager Daniel Bryan revealed the new SmackDown logo on his official Twitter page, renaming the show SmackDown Live. On April 10, 2018, SmackDown Commissioner Shane McMahon announced that Daniel Bryan was back as a full-time WWE wrestler and named Paige the new general manager. The show had its 1000th episode on October 16, 2018.
SmackDown on Fox (2019–2024)
On June 26, 2018, Fox announced a five-year agreement to air SmackDown, in a deal worth $205 million per year. SmackDown would debut on October 4, 2019, with its first episode being the 20th Anniversary special. The episode also marked the return of SmackDown to Friday nights and the return of WWE programming to Fox for the first time since Fox aired the November 14, 1992 episode of Saturday Night's Main Event. The agreement came as WWE's previous broadcast deal with USA Network to air both SmackDown and WWE Raw was set to expire, and as Fox has increasingly emphasized live sports programming and non-scripted entertainment in the wake of its then-upcoming sale of its in-house studios to Disney. Fox had hoped to acquire Raw for the Fox network and SmackDown for FS1. However, amid a competitive bidding situation, NBCUniversal focused its efforts on renewing Raw, freeing up Fox to pursue SmackDown. In particular, Fox promised a larger amount of promotion for SmackDown during its sports programming, as well as a WWE-oriented studio show on FS1.From March 13, 2020, all WWE touring shows were cancelled indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with SmackDown, Raw, and pay-per-views being broadcast from a studio in the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida with no audience beginning that night. The ensuing episode also featured Triple H as a guest commentator, and an encore presentation of the Elimination Chamber match for the SmackDown Tag Team Championship from the titular pay-per-view the previous Sunday. On August 17, WWE announced that SmackDown, Raw, and pay-per-views would move out of the Performance Center to the "WWE ThunderDome" at Orlando's Amway Center, beginning with SmackDown on August 21. The program continued to be broadcast behind closed doors, but with a virtual audience and enhanced arena production. WWE returned to hosting and touring shows for both the SmackDown and Raw brands in July 2021.
Since the move to Fox, SmackDown has occasionally been pre-empted to FS1 due to conflicts with other Fox Sports programming airing in primetime, particularly the Major League Baseball postseason. In one instance in October 2019 due to the World Series, an hour-long version of the episode aired on Fox the following Sunday afternoon.
In conjunction with the 2023 Money in the Bank event, which was held at The O2 Arena in London, England, on July 1, the June 30, 2023, episode of SmackDown was held at the same venue, and broadcast live on BT Sport in local primetime hours for the first time. In 2024, the program aired episodes from other countries for the first time in conjunction with other WWE PPV's, including May 3 for Backlash France, May 24 for King and Queen of the Ring, and August 31 for Bash in Berlin.