On the September 9th episode of Monday Night RAW, WWE announced that the flagship show would return to a two-hour format from October 7th until the end of the year.
This marks the first time WWE RAW has run at two hours since it switched to the three-hour format with the 1,000th episode on July 23, 2012.
It’s worth noting that this decision comes during a transitional period for WWE RAW as it prepares to move from the USA Network to Netflix.
Despite the Netflix deal not taking effect until January 2025, WWE reached an agreement with USA to extend RAW’s run on the network after the original deal was set to expire this month.
On the latest edition of Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported that the USA Network was responsible for reverting RAW to a two-hour format.
Moreover, it was noted that when RAW moves to Netflix in January 2025, it will once again become a three-hour show.
Meltzer said, “It’s a three-hour show when they move back to Netflix. Yeah, I had it confirmed a few minutes ago….The basic situation is that it was a USA Network call, not a WWE call. I am not sure why. It will boost the ratings of the show because they won’t have that third hour that drags down the average, but I’m not sure exactly why USA made the call.”
Bryan Alvarez noted, “Well, maybe they had a plan for the 10 o’clock hour, and then, because originally it was just Raw, was done. And then they signed the Netflix deal and found out, ‘Well, shit, we got three months. We’re gonna be off the air in September, four months.’ And so they made a deal with USA. And maybe USA was like, ‘We already have something to 10, yeah, but we can do 8 to 10.’”
Meltzer continued, “It could be. It was USA Network who made the call.”
Alvarez said, “Or maybe they didn’t want to pay for three hours.”
Meltzer added, “No, it didn’t have to do that because they weren’t paying for hardly anything for this.”
