Update On WWE SmackDown Schedule During Holidays
A few changes are in the offing
Dec 5, 2021
With Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve both falling on Fridays this year, WWE is instituting changes to the SmackDown broadcast schedule for those weeks, according to an update from Dave Meltzer on today's Wrestling Observer Radio.
According to the report, the December 24 SmackDown will be taped one week earlier, on December 17 in Chicago. On that date, Chicago will be getting a double SmackDown taping - a live episode for that night, then a taped episode for the following week.
Additionally, the New Year's Eve SmackDown scheduled for Charlotte, NC has been canceled. FOX will not be airing SmackDown that night due to their own New Year's Eve broadcast, leaving FS1 as an alternative. However, Vince McMahon, Nick Khan, and Kevin Dunn decided there was no point in doing a New Year's Eve broadcast on FS1, since SmackDown pre-emptions that end up there do generally bad viewership numbers, made worse by airing on a night that'll pull a terrible rating anyway.
Instead of a live broadcast on New Year's Eve, WWE will instead air a sort of "year in review" program on FS1.
The SmackDown schedule for the remainder of the year looks like this:
December 10: Los Angeles, live
December 17: Chicago, live
December 24: Chicago, taped December 17
December 31: Year in review special on FS1
