Tony Khan, the President of All Elite Wrestling has talked in detail about the company’s deal with WarnerMedia that sees Dynamite heading to TBS and a new Friday night show called Rampage hitting the air.
As reported in Deadline, the flagship show of All Elite Wrestling is shifting from TNT to TBS come January 2022. The much-talked-about extra hour of programming on the network begins on Friday, August 13th on TNT at 10 pm ET and will be called AEW: Rampage.
Speaking on Busted Open Radio, Tony Khan gave more details on the move and the new show:
“So I have renegotiated our contract with TNT and TBS and we’ve made a great agreement. I’m very excited about it. First of all, we’re launching a third hour of wrestling that I’ve talked about a lot. It’ll be Friday nights at 10 p.m. It will be in addition to Dynamite on Wednesdays, 8-10. We’re launching a show called Rampage (that) I’m really excited about and wanted to do for a long time. It was part of our original extension over a year ago. So we’re doing another show Friday nights, 10 p.m., called Rampage, and we’ll continue doing Dynamite on Wednesdays, 8-10 p.m.”
“In 2022, and this is a great deal they put together with very, very fair financial considerations for us in this, we will be moving to TBS with both shows. Dynamite and Rampage in 2022 will go to TBS. But we will not be leaving TNT, because we’re adding another great thing for the wrestling fans. Quarterly, and I’m not sure which night they’ll be on, but in the past there’ve been great supercard specials for wrestling fans, like Clash of the Champions, Saturday Night’s Main Event, The Main Event, Battle of the Belts. We’re going to have our own supercard series and we’re going to have quarterly supercards still on TNT, which is another part of this great deal that we worked out with WarnerMedia.”
Khan added that originally AEW were asked if they would add a third hour to Dynamite but he feels having that third hour of programming on another night makes sense:
“It’s great for everybody here, it’s big news. We knew that another show was coming this year. I’ve been saying it for a long time that we were going to add another night, one hour. I didn’t want to do three hours of Dynamite. They (WarnerMedia) asked at one point if I wanted to do three hours of Dynamite. It came up about doing a third hour and I said I really believed in doing it on another night.”
With Rampage coming to Friday nights at 10 p.m. that means it will air directly after WWE SmackDown on Fox. Tony Khan sees this as a positive and adds that Rampage will in no way be a secondary show to Dynamite:
“This time slot I think is really good for the fans to keep a great night for wrestling fresh on Friday nights. So at 10 p.m., you’re going to have a great option to come watch Rampage. And I promise you Rampage isn’t going to be a secondary show. Rampage is going to be the partner of Dynamite, the equivalent of Dynamite. We have these two strong franchises in Dynamite and Rampage and they are our weekly core properties.”
“And then we’ll have our peripheral properties (Dark and Elevation). They’re probably the equivalent of what you’d seen, partially a developmental show, partially a syndicated show. I think that’s what you’ll get on Elevation and Dark. But Rampage and Elevation, those will be our core properties on TNT for the rest of the year, and then next year going to TBS. I’m really excited about it.”