AnthonyMango/NoFate007
A Post Is Worth A Thousand Words
Breaking News: Major WWE Changes Coming Soon
05/23/2008 by Ryan Clark
According to a new report by PWInsider, WWE will be pulling the plug on the Heat series that airs every week on WWE.com and will be bringing ECW on Sci Fi tapings to the Raw brand starting this June after a company tour of Australia.
The plan at this point is to have the ECW brand performers at the Raw tapings as a way to increase interest and ratings for ECW on Tuesday night, making it now taped one day earlier on Monday night's before the live broadcast of Raw.
With the company making this move it has been assumed that all ECW talent will join up with Raw house show events as well, but this hasn't been confirmed. As a result, the Smackdown brand would become stand-alone TV taping and house show events.
WWE has informed TV affiliates that a "WWE Classics" series utilizing old footage would be replacing Heat very soon.
Didn't think this fit on any of the specific brand forums, but if mods think so, feel free to move it.
So what are your feelings about this?
Personally, I don't see why they're doing it. Heat isn't anything amazing, but it did mean more wrestling (just on WWE.com and for the audience to watch). Any fans of the people that are normally relegated to Heat don't get to see them as much anymore.
At the same time, one of the weird things has always been that they taped Smackdown before ECW, so you'd have spoilers for things that haven't happened yet. Now we've got things going on for ECW before we even have the flagship show telling us what's brand new. What about the upcoming 3 hour show? Are they going to film an hour of ECW, then 3 hours of live Raw, all on one night?
Also, does this mean that the Smackdown/ECW talent exchange won't happen anymore? That's a shame if that's true, because Raw doesn't have enough time for its own roster, let alone ECW's. The S/E exchange was one of the best things to happen to both brands in my opinion.
Your thoughts, concerns, cheers, boos?