Vince McMahon Announces Smackdown Premiere on USA

On January 7th, WWE’s Thursday Night Smackdown will premiere on the USA Network. It was officially announced several weeks ago that Smackdown was moving to USA. Now, it’s official from Vince McMahon himself.

WWE.com posted the following statement about Smackdown’s move to the USA Network this January:

‘“WWE is proud to have SmackDown join Raw as part of our expanded partnership with USA Network,” said WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon. “The combination of the No. 1 cable network and two ratings juggernauts provides a destination for our viewers and an extraordinary platform for our partners.’”

With more than 800 original episodes, SmackDown is the second longest-running weekly episodic program in U.S. television history and is consistently one of the highest-rated weekly series on cable over the past 15 years – only behind Monday Night Raw. Since its debut, SmackDown has been broadcast from 170 different venues, in 148 cities and in seven different countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Iraq, Japan, Italy and Mexico. On Jan. 7, SmackDown will air its 855th episode from Laredo, Texas.

WWE is going to heavily promote Smackdown’s return to the spotlight over the rest of 2015. Hopefully, this news is going to make Smackdown a great second show for WWE and offers a lot of talents the opportunity to shine. It’s about time WWE made something out of Smackdown again.