Tony Khan stated in an interview with Shakiel Mahjouri of CBS Sports that he wants to have at least five hours of AEW television per week. He admitted this could include AEW Dynamite moving to three hours. It shouldn’t surprise any fans that this may happen. Since AEW started their shows have been moving around every year for NCAA Tournament Basketball, NBA Basketball, and NHL Hockey. In recent weeks, we’ve seen AEW Rampage air right after AEW Collision on Saturday nights. Plus occasionally Rampage will air after AEW Dynamite on Wednesday nights.
Khan said, “I love being able to do more follow-up with things that happened earlier in the night with more time. Us being able to cover more wrestlers and tell more stories. To utilize more of the roster. I think it gives more opportunities when we have that three-hour block.”
Having more time can lead to opportunities to follow-up on segments from beginning to end of one show or from one show to another. This has been a criticism of AEW programming from the start. Khan used a digital promo by Will Ospreay as an example.
Khan on Having Opportunities for Follow-Up
Tony Khan stated, “If I had seen that I would have moved stuff around later in the third-hour block to get that on TV the same night. Those are the things you can do when you get really good footage and have more time to play with. There are all kinds of opportunities it creates to follow up. I’ve really enjoyed it.”
Also in the same interview with Mahjouri, Tony Khan said there is a “good chance” that there will be more three-hour blocks of programming and that he is “very open” to it. But he noted that extending AEW Dynamite to three hours is also a possibility.
Five Hours is the Minimum
Tony Khan stated,” You want to keep Dynamite as strong as possible. You look at the history of what happened with the two-hour wrestling show when that show expanded to three hours. It’s interesting right now per hour the most we get per hour for any of our TV shows is Dynamite. Either way, five-hour weekly programming is the absolute minimum.”
He continued,”So in some ways, you would say, ‘That would be a very lucrative opportunity.’ I think it’s a very interesting conversation to have about how many nights a week you allocate to programming. Is five hours the best? Should we do six?”
Negotiations Come Into Play
With so many fans talking about the negotiations between AEW and Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), it is a rampant topic on social media. Khan made sure that it was said that he wants to do at least five hours of TV every week, but he could be sold on doing even more.
“I want to do at least five now,” Khan said. “I’ve tasted blood and want more so I could easily be sold on doing more than five hours of programming…”
In my opinion, Tony Khan and AEW will be doing more than five hours a week eventually. I just think some of it may be reality-based TV shows on either upcoming PPVs or on the wrestlers’ lives. I can definitely see WBD wanted their own “Total Divas” type show to get the female audience to tune in to the wrestling shows.
