[Strikeout King]

John Cena just tweeted the following message regarding a major change to WWE’s flagship Monday night show:

“STARTING Monday Night July 23 @USA_NETWORK WILL BE ADDING A 3RD HOUR TO @WWE MONDAY NIGHT RAW – PERMANENTLY. #3hourRaw”

The July 23rd show will be RAW’s 1,000th episode.

The announcement of RAW moving to 3-hours every week is now on WWE.com and has also been re-tweeted by John Laurinaitis, Dolph Ziggler, David Otunga and “Road Dogg” BG James.

It was recently reported that WWE’s weekly RAW tapings would be starting close to an hour earlier – and this news explains why. No word yet on whether the extra hour will be the rumored RAW pre-show.



http://www.sescoops.com/wwe-raw-moving-t...july-23rd/

[RunItUpTheGut]

Could this hurt the show, or will it pay off?

[Stardust]

It costs them nothing more to do. This has been kicked around for the past few years. It gives them more advertising spots for USA, which benefits WWE. It gives them another hour to book matches, which gives more wrestlers an opportunity for on-air time. It adds an hour to give more time to build storylines, which benefits the fans by having a more clear understanding of the angles.

The entire roster travels to the Monday night city anyhow, so there is no additional costs. So it really comes down to will the fans watch another hour of wrestling and the answer is likely yes. No matter how you slice it, the school age kids are a big audience. The WWE has down studies in the past that has shown that they lose a portion of their viewers at 10:00 PM due to bedtime. They are banking on more PG version angles early in the show. Also expect the cruiserwieghts to come back to WWE to be used during the first hour.

[Mr. Pike Central]

I actually don't like the move, they have enough crap on 2 hours.

Another hour will just be overkill, and more useless filler.

However, if they make that hour like a hype up similiar to like Monday Night Football or something...that would be cool.

[dangerousdaneerfan]

If they would ditch Smackdown on the SciFi network, it will work since RAW is a supershow.

[Cardinalfootballguy]

I love it, if done right they can get so much more talent on TV that we never see

[Strikeout King]

I like it. I just hope it's more fighting instead of talking

[WideRight05]

It didn't work for WCW Nitro, but I do think it will work here. I had a feeling that the reason they have done several three hour shows as of late is to test the waters with it. I actually thought they would pull this off last year when they started airing Tough Enough with Stone Cold an hour before the show. I thought they would start doing that when the Tough Enough season ended.

[Stardust]

I actually don't like the move, they have enough crap on 2 hours.

Another hour will just be overkill, and more useless filler.

However, if they make that hour like a hype up similiar to like Monday Night Football or something...that would be cool.

The pre-game show has been kicked around before. But that's still not going to stop the in-ring promo's