Exclusive WWE Thunderdome News: How Long Fans Stay On Camera, SummerSlam Length, Blocked List

WWE will debut their Thunderdome viewing experience on tonight's episode of Friday Night SmackDown. You can read our report on the sneak peak of Thunderdome that WWE held on Thursday at this link.

Wrestling Inc. has learned that the ThunderDome will have a rotating virtual audience. The virtual audience members will be placed on the LED boards and will be able to view the match or segment that is occurring.

The fans in the virtual audience will be rotated every 15 – 30 minutes. After that time, the viewer could be re-positioned to another location on the video board or removed from the live feed entirely. Viewers will not be in the audience for the entire show.

It was noted that the more enthusiasm a viewer shows, the more likely they are to stay in the live stream and could get a better location on the video boards to be seen on TV.

There will be a moderator that will interact with the virtual viewers. It is not known if the moderator will tell viewers who to cheer or boo for.

An entire team is in charge of the virtual audience production. Their jobs will be rotation, positioning and removing viewers from the video boards.

WWE has standby spots for the ThunderDome in case a viewer's feed goes out, they decide to leave the feed or they are removed for not following the rules.

Regarding not following the rules, there is a feeling that they will be tested over the next several shows by people seeing how far they can go before they are removed for one reason or another. It's been said that if you are removed from the live feed, your name and email address would be added to a blocked list.

The feeling is getting through Monday's Raw would be considered getting over the mountain, in terms of working out any issues that may arise. It was mentioned that the worst thing that could happen is that they lose their feed to the virtual audience members and would have to think on the fly as to what they should place on the video boards. It was noted that they have a backup plan, but it's not an ideal one that they want to go with.

There will be a time delay, as programming on TV will be ahead of what you are watching if you are a virtual viewer partaking in the ThunderDome. This is done to keep the show running smoothly and fix any issues that may come up that are fixable.

It also appears that the longer pay-per-views are back with the Thunderdome. We learned that Summer Slam is expected to be be a 3 1/2 to 4 hours. The shorter PPVs seem to be gone, at least for now.