AEW to expand to 2 nights per week with new 4 year, $175M deal

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/aew...al-1203467956/

Seems like a great deal, especially considering they've only been on TV 4 months.

But less is more.

Well, AEW Dark is also coming to TNT so I think that should be enough personally. Personally, I think there are elements that AEW needs to work on such as coming up with new strategies and directions for its women's division, which is sorely lacking in my eyes, and the fact that they have no mid-card title. There are plenty of mid-card to undercard wrestlers in AEW who aren't really doing a whole lot of anything except filling in some space with some of them getting together for random tag team matches or just getting into single week feuds. I think AEW Dark would be a perfect venue for some of these mid-card and undercard guys because, otherwise, it'll just feel like it does now: a show to feature matches not considered important enough to be on the main show.

This is great. However apparently AEW is now picking up the production costs, so while they get more money, they have to spend more money. It was smart of them to strike while the iron's hot though.

The 2nd show worries me. If they tape everything in 1 night the show is incredibly long (at least 3 hours of TV plus Dark), and you can't really have one performer on both programs. If you do 2 Live Shows, you double your number of weekly live events, which could impact the performers who signed up for less dates and still do indy bookings/Dental practices.


I think the prudent thing to do is put Dark on Hiatus until you feel like running 2 shows a week, then bring back Dark to air the dark matches from both shows. OK really the answer is to change the name of Dark entirely, as Dark is implying that the matches are unaired, yet they are aired.