FOX CEO Charlie Collier spoke at the Television Critics Association press tour yesterday and hinted that SmackDown may not be on Friday nights permanently when it moves to FOX in October.
When asked about FOX’s current Friday night show, Last Man Standing, Collier said, “Short term, Friday night is going to WWE.”
This past Friday, “Last Man Standing” drew 5,926,000 viewers at 8PM ET and “The Cool Kids” drew 4,648,000 at 8:30, so SmackDown would have to see a significant jump in viewers to beat those numbers. Last Man Standing’s number is almost three times what SmackDown has been doing recently.
Collier also said that FS1, FOX’s cable sports channel, will also have “some” WWE programming, saying, “The FOX Sports networks, FS1 and others, will have some other wrestling. Not live SmackDown, not Raw, but other ties to the WWE world.”