WBD Reportedly Considering Special AEW TV Block During NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs

This past weekend, "AEW Collision" aired on two back-to-back nights due to the NCAA March Madness tournament taking place. This meant AEW President Tony Khan scheduled one-hour of "Collision" for both Saturday and Sunday night in order to avoid losing viewership, or being forced to cancel the show for the week. In addition, Khan labelled the two-parter a "Slam Dunk" special, and hoped that the lead-in from both NCAA games would increase ratings for the show on each night, and it was a giant success. AEW managed to draw over 500,000 viewers for each show, making both one-hour programs the most watched episodes of "Collision" this year, and according to Andrew Zarian on "Beyond the Bell," Khan will be looking to announce another special in the near future.

"This is not going to be the last time this year that they do something unique with the schedule. Spoke to someone couple weeks ago and they were telling me that these are experiments that Warner [Brothers Discovery] is willing to try." Zarian said. "I heard it from two sides from Warner, that during the Stanley Cup [playoffs] there's going to be an opportunity to do something very big and the way that it was presented to me is that it is a possibility of a four-hour special." 

Zarian also noted that WBD is open to the idea of airing AEW programming during different time slots, rather than cancelling any shows when sports such as college basketball or events like the NBA All-Star weekend take precedence. However, he then continued to explain the structure of AEW's schedule during the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs in order to get more eyes on the product. 

Although nothing is set in stone for AEW to air a four-hour program, Zarian went into further detail about the company's history with combining their flagship shows into longer TV specials in order to ensure that they won't get cancelled.

"The idea is still soft. It could be just 'Dynamite' on and then followed by a 'Collision,' so a four-hour block ... they did this with 'Rampage,' it went on right after 'Dynamite' and people really enjoyed it and the numbers did really well for 'Rampage' cause it was a third hour of the show ... they're looking to do these more to see if they could do a large block of programming and just make it feel like a special for TV." Zarian said. "Interesting that they're willing to do that because generally you don't want a four-hour show or four-hour block but I guess this is another unique way to put it on, so things don't get preempted or they don't get cancelled."

Zarian mentioned that AEW's four-hour special will be presented as a pay-per-view level show, which reminded him of the original concept for Battle of the Belts. He also noted that there's still uncertainty about how much time will be allocated for both "Dynamite" and "Collision" across the four hours, but AEW is prepared to put plans in place to maintain viewership during the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs.

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Beyond the Bell" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.