WarnerMedia today announced major changes to AEW TV programming in the coming months.
AEW Dynamite will move to TBS in January 2022. It will remain in its Wednesday 8 PM ET time slot.
A new weekly one-hour show called “AEW Rampage” will air on Fridays at 10 PM ET on TNT starting on Friday, August 13. This is the long-promised second weekly TV show that was part of the deal AEW signed with WarnerMedia in January 2020. It was implied that AEW Rampage would also move to TBS along with Dynamite starting in 2022.
AEW will now have four wrestling shows per week: Dark: Elevation on Monday, Dark on Tuesday, Dynamite on Wednesday, and Rampage on Friday.
AEW will also have four special “supercard” shows on TNT per year. It’s not clear if those will begin this year or next. The announcement of the specials also seems to imply that they would be separate standalone shows on another night of the week rather than special episodes of Dynamite on Wednesdays, but there are not many details available right now.
“While we’re looking forward to our arrival on TBS, we’re not saying goodbye to our original and current home of TNT, which will air four new special supercard events annually,” Tony Khan said in a WarnerMedia press release.
AEW will also get a “significant” “increase in TV compensation” as part of this deal, according to Dave Meltzer.
“The financial upside to our new agreement will give us the opportunity to continue to invest in and grow AEW to serve the most important people in our industry: our fans, our wrestlers, our staff and our sponsors,” Khan said. “With All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite and Rampage taking center stage via our new agreement on TBS next year, and the new quarterly supercards launching on TNT, our exposure and our opportunities to grow AEW are greater than ever!”
TNT/TBS/truTV General Manager Brett Weitz told the New York Post that Warner’s TV deal with the NHL that will begin next season had something to do with AEW’s move to TBS, and also mentioned the several preemptions from NBA games that AEW deals with on TNT.
“Did the NHL have anything to do with it? Sure,” Weitz said. “NHL had something to do with it. NBA had something to do with it, the COVID schedule, the ton of preemptions. When we looked where the consumer’s gonna be, where wrestling fans were going to be, we want to give them the most opportunity to consume as many shows as possible. We felt TBS had an opportunity to be the network and the best platform for expansion.”