Smackdown

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.