AEW Show To Be Canceled By Warner Bros Discovery?

AEW

According to a new report in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, AEW shows could be at risk of being canceled by Warner Bros Discovery.

As you’ll see in the below report, the broadcasters are undergoing a large scale shake-up, which could see a number of shows being axed.

One AEW show that could be at particular risk is the reality show that has been filmed to replace Rhodes At The Top.

When it comes to AEW’s actual wrestling shows, their fate seems likely to be decided by whether WBD sees them as sports shows or entertainment shows. They may not be canceled, but there could be changes to the stations they air on depending on WBD’s internal perception of them.

Dave Meltzer wrote:

In the latest news involving TBS and TNT going forward, Business Insider as well as other publications have reported WBD CEO David Zaslav is prioritizing the two stations and is considering putting HBO and HBO Max repeats onto the0 station, like The Sopranos, The Flight Attendant, Hacks, Succession, and other HBO and HBO Max popular shows. The idea is that it would be low cost prime time programming and would alleviate the need to produce first run programming. How this affects AEW will be unclear until negotiations start, although TBS and TNT dropping the development of new shows may threaten the planned reality show on AEW couples (which was to replace Rhodes to the Top) that was scheduled for late this year but nothing has been said about it of late. That show was being filmed months ago so it may not fall into the shows axed.

They are also talking about Turner Sports taking over the programming of either TBS or TNT and making it a station with a heavy sports emphasis. If the perception internally is that AEW is sports, and it does better ratings 52 weeks a year than most of the sports properties, this would seem to be a good thing. If they view it as entertainment programming, it doesn’t sound like as much of a good thing. One idea being reported is making either TNT or TBS being the sports focused channel, rather than having sports split between the two channels, putting all the sports on one of the two channels along with more sports-related talk shows and other sports programming. The idea is to use he sports content to promote and get people to watch the HBO and HBO Max shows and then drive them to order both services. The big question is how WBD views AEW.

It really is a big question, because WBD’s perspective really could decide the future of AEW.

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• Warner Bros
• TBS
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