AEW Saturday Night Rampage?

 

We are less than one week away from AEW's newest program Rampage. Airing on  Friday nights starting August 13th on TNT, before moving to TBS sometime next year. 

Rampage is scheduled to be a 1 hour show airing at 10 pm, some weeks it'll be live other weeks taped. I heard the news was excited for AEW to grow and gain more exposure, but I recently realized something that is overlooked and the special airings of Dynamite only solidified.

AEW missed the perfect opportunity to bring meaningful wrestling back to national TV on Saturday nights. WCW Saturday Night was a staple on TBS with it's famous 6:05 Eastern start time every Saturday for well over twenty years. Before the days of Monday Nitro, Saturday Night was WCW's premiere program. Over on the WWF front they had Saturday Night's Main Event which ran on NBC from 1985-1991. These programs were Saturday Night can't miss for many and personally I would love to see that return.

ROH airs their weekly syndicated show every weekend. I'm in Maryland and it airs at 10 pm Saturday nights on one of Sinclairs flagship local stations, and replayed at least two more times Sunday. There's no telling what time it comes on in other markets. MLW did air Saturdays on Bein Sports but that channel is only available in an limited amount of homes. It hasn't been confirmed what day of the week their new programming on Vice will air, Vice is also limited in homes it reaches.

The last national wrestling program that aired on Saturday nights I can think of was TNA Impact back in the mid 2000's when they first aired on SpikeTV.  It aired at 11:00 pm and was on for a few months before moving to Thursday nights.

TNT and TBS are available in millions of homes on the most basic cable packages. It would be a stretch in the summer time to get audiences to tune in live, but it'd be no different than the 10 pm time slot on a Friday in the summer as well. In the late fall through winter when most are in the house, it would be must see TV. Between last years and this years Saturday editions of Dynamite, AEW had a good trial run. People tuned in and the episodes featured quality wrestling. 

To make a long story short, AEW-TurnerMedia pay homage to the past and give us back Saturday Night wrestling. If no one else will watch I know I  will.