It’s the beginning. It’s early. I wouldn’t even call it momentum at this point, but the indications are clear that AEW is building serious momentum, and now, you’ve got a third hour on Friday night following WWE programming with the potential, at least, of some of these high equity, former WWE talents making that transition.
I was supportive of the Friday night opportunity for AEW. Yes, it does pose risk. Everything poses a risk people! Everything, and there are risks with creating an additional hour, particularly on a major cable network. What are those risks? You can dilute your talent pool. You can create a situation where your must-see programming, in AEW’s case on Wednesday night, becomes not quite as must-see because well, you can pick it up on Friday night or a version thereof. That’s a risk. The upside is they’re making more money.
You got to balance that, but now, with at least the potential of some of these key players coming over from WWE to AEW, you talk about a way to draft that WWE audience. They are in such a great position. Of course, in AEW’s case, they’re gonna have to deliver. You can only ride the anticipation horse so long before, ‘Okay, we’re done being excited about what could happen.
Let’s show us what is going to happen,’ but right now, I don’t want to say what AEW is doing is flawless, certainly not flawless. I don’t know that anything can be, but this is about as close to it as you can get, and they’re getting a huge assist from WWE, for whatever reasons known or unknown to all of us who are not in the office, so to speak.
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