WWE SmackDown (1999)

Original title

WWE Friday Night SmackDown

Genre

professional wrestling, sports entertainment

Country

United States

Length

28 seasons, 1408 episodes

Rated

TV-PG

Rating

7.5 of 10 from 190 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

Professional wrestlers perform in scripted matches and storylines as part of the SmackDown brand. The show airs live on Fridays and features rivalries and physical confrontations.

energeticintensedramaticfast-pacedathleticshowycompetitive

What happens

WWE SmackDown, also known as Friday Night SmackDown or simply SmackDown, is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE. It currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on USA Network in the United States, and in most international markets on Netflix. The show features characters from the SmackDown brand, to which WWE wrestlers are assigned to work and perform. SmackDown debuted on August 26, 1999 and is considered to be one of WWE's two flagship programs, along with Monday Night Raw. Originally launched as a complementary second show to Raw, SmackDown became further distinct after the WWE brand split in 2002, representing the company's talent in the SmackDown brand roster. It has been taped in and broadcast from over hundreds of arenas and cities throughout twelve countries, mostly in the United States but also in Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Prior to switching to its current live format, taped episodes premiered a few hours or up to a day earlier in certain countries outside the United States due to time differences. SmackDown! began on the broadcast network UPN in 1999 and was initially broadcast on Thursday nights. The show moved to Friday nights on September 9, 2005, and began airing on The CW in September 2006, after the merger of UPN and the WB, before later moving to MyNetworkTV in October 2008. On October 1, 2010, SmackDown moved to cable network Syfy, and eventually returned to Thursdays on January 15, 2015. The show then moved to the sibling USA Network on January 7, 2016, and later that year, beginning on July 19, SmackDown began broadcasting live on Tuesday nights. SmackDown's move to Fox on October 4, 2019 marked the show's return to Friday nights and over-the-air broadcast television. On September 13, 2024, the show returned to USA Network. As of 2024, SmackDown is the most viewed television show on Friday nights in the United States. Smackdown! has also been broadcast globally on other networks since it first began. The WWE Network ceased operations in the United States on April 4, 2021, with all content moved to Peacock which has all previous episodes of SmackDown, in 2025 most WWE content was moved to Netflix. As of March 15, 2026, Peacock retains replays of recent episodes of WWE SmackDown until at least 2029, as USA Network secured a five-year broadcasting rights deal for the program that began in 2024. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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