Dave Meltzer Gives Update On WWE SmackDown Duration

Since the turn of the new year, "WWE SmackDown" has been the biggest its ever been as it had its runtime extended to three hours for the first time in the show's history. However, many people were left confused by the fact that the three hour runtime will only be operating until the summer, before returning to the usual two hour runtime it has had since 1999. Dave Meltzer was asked about the runtime on a recent edition of "Wrestling Observer Radio" as TKO recently revealed their financial report for 2024, where "SmackDown's" deal with the USA Network was mentioned, and it seems that people in WWE don't know the exact date the three hour shows will end.

"I don't know if it's going to be six months every year or something, or how the deal is, but they said like it's going to be the first six months of the year basically. Nobody seems to know, I've heard like end of May, then I've heard end of June when it goes back to two hours." Meltzer went on to state that the third hour of "SmackDown" could have been a USA decision as the network lost both "WWE Raw" and "WWE NXT" in 2024, and without "SmackDown," the station's weekly average viewership would be significantly down, thus relying on WWE to bring eyes to their channel.

While "SmackDown" has extended to three hours, "Raw" has gone the opposite way as the show reverted back to the two hour runtime for the first time in over a decade back in October 2024, and their new home of Netflix allows them to be more flexible with the length of a show, with Triple H claiming that the two-and-a-half hour mark is "the sweet spot."

Please credit "Wrestling Observer Radio" when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.