Big Update on the Television Future of WWE's Monday Night Raw & SmackDown Live Programs

In an update on the future of WWE's Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live programs, it appears as though Raw will most likely end up staying with NBCUniversal's USA Network. In fact, it's being reported by HollywoodReporter.com that WWE and NBCU could end up finalizing a deal worth up to three times their current deal in order to keep Raw with NBCU and USA Network.

However, it is possible that WWE will end up finding a new home for their SmackDown Live program. The article from HollywoodReporter.com notes that Fox is still a likely contender to secure the right to SD Live, although nothing is certain as of yet.

WWE Chief Financial Officer George Barrios appeared at the 46th Annual J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference and talked about the possibility of having Raw and SmackDown Live on separate networks again:

“From our end, we don’t think it’s an issue to split it.

“We have done it before. We think we’re pretty good at promoting and moving our viewers from one platform to another. Seven or eight years ago, it was only from one network to another network, which changed dramatically.

“So, we’ve been able to do it before, we would feel even more comfortable doing it today just because we have a direct connection with all our fans which we did not have seven or eight years ago. So, our ability to do that, if it made sense economically, if there were partners interested, if we felt comfortable with the partners in question, operationally we would not see an issue with doing that.”