The CW President: Raw And Smackdown Were ‘A Little Bit Beyond Our Budget’

May 17, 2024

It seems like there was a good reason why The CW picked up NXT instead of Raw and Smackdown.

Last year, WWE announced a new TV deal for NXT. They signed a five-year contract with The CW to exclusively air their programming on the network. This begins in October, with NXT being one of the new programs for their fall lineup.

Deadline revealed the new fall schedule yesterday, revealing NXT will retain its Tuesday night slot from 8pm to 10pm. They agreed to show NXT 52 weeks a year for five, a huge show of faith for the network.

They join Billy Corgan’s NWA on the network. However, as per the deal signed, NWA Powerrrrr is only being streamed, and the show isn’t being shown on broadcast television.

In an interview with Variety, network president Dennis Miller revealed why they went for NXT over other WWE programming. He confirmed that Raw and Smackdown were “beyond our budget”, so settled for the developmental TV show instead.

“We knew that ‘Raw’ and ‘SmackDown’ were a little bit beyond our budget here. Then if you look, we have a lot of sports where we have kind of that next tier moving into the first tier here, whether it’s the Xfinity races leading into the Cup, or it’s NXT leading into ‘Raw’ and ‘SmackDown.’ So it just started to fit. Then over the course of a couple of months, we went back and forth and got the deal done.”