The three-hour era of Friday Night Smackdown will reportedly come to an end soon.
The final 180-minute version of the show could air as soon as the end of this month, per a recent report from PWInsider.
They’re reporting that the show will revert to its traditional two-hour timeslot by July 4 on the USA Network, ending a months-long experiment of extending the show until 11 p.m. on the East.
A current TV listing for the USA Network shows that a July 4 episode of Smackdown will run from 8 to 10 p.m. ET, with a new episode of “Resident Alien” airing in what would usually be the third hour of the wrestling program.
Smackdown had started airing as a three-hour program in January this year, still beginning at its usual start time of 8 p.m. ET. This was a significant change from how things used to be, with Smackdown long being the two-hour show while Raw ran three hours on Mondays. Since the beginning of 2025, Smackdown has run longer than Raw, which usually comes to a close after two-and-a-half hours.
Even if the recent report didn’t surface, there was some belief that the three-hour era for Smackdown was on borrowed time.
The USA Network announced earlier this week that a new TV series, “The Rainmaker,” will premiere on August 15, a Friday, at 10 p.m. ET. This would force Smackdown to either bump its start time ahead by an hour or end an hour early.
