World Wrestling Entertainment, seeking a new home for “Smackdown” when the show departs The CW network, has narrowed its suitors down to two, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the negotiations.
Barring last-minute bidding by a third party, MyNetworkTV and Tribune Broadcasting are vying for the wrestling show.
MyNetworkTV would bring the program back to the former UPN affiliates that once had the property.
Tribune has a number of options for where it could put “Smackdown,” including Superstation WGN. Tribune was a surprise entry in the bidding, with most pundits expecting NBC to be one of the last bidders standing.
Both MyNet and Tribune have been undergoing soul-searching in the past year, adding executives to fine-tune their business structures. With The CW’s decision to drop “Smackdown” from its lineup earlier this month, both companies are looking toward the WWE product as a means to incorporate an instant brand—and built-in audiences—into their lineups.
WWE’s shows, and “Smackdown” in particular, have a history as brand builders for the outlets that carry them.
WWE’s “Raw” helped pull viewers to USA originally, then helped relaunch SpikeTV before returning to USA last year. The series currently earns around 4.5 million viewers on the channel.
In the late 1990s, “Smackdown” averaged more than 7 million viewers as a series that helped anchor UPN, providing some much-needed viewers for the struggling network. As part of The CW’s lineup, the series has earned closer to 5 million viewers per week. That makes it one of the network’s most popular shows, although it brought in different audiences than other series in the outlet’s lineup.
“Since the CW’s exclusive negotiation period ran out as of … Jan. 31, we have been contacted and have been in negotiations with other networks,” WWE executives said in an earlier statement. Its final appearance on The CW will be Sept. 12.
