Superstar Might Change Brands, AEW Changing Channels Soon

It sounds like a WWE Superstar might change brands soon. Speaking of changes, AEW expects to be changing channels soon as well.

Superstar Might Change Brands

Though he has not even returned to live television yet, a Superstar might change brands in the not too distant future.

That lead in might have given away the Superstar who might be changing brands.

While we’ve recently seen his return vignettes airing on SmackDown, it seems that WWE is considering a shift for Aleister Black.

Yes, Black is the Superstar who might change brands.

According to WrestleVotes, someone in creative actually noticed that, by using top singles acts like AJ Styles and Randy Orton in tag teams…the top of the card gets thinned out.

As if that wasn’t on-brand enough for WWE…one move they are considering is moving a returning Superstar…after beginning to tease his return on the other brand.

Yep, WWE is really smart with the planning…

Not trying to be overly cynical, but any flak these moves get, WWE has earned. All of the moves are being planned and not reactive to a major and unfortunate injury.

WWE chose to make AJ Styles a tag partner (and champion) with the extremely big and green Omos.

They then chose to pair up Randy Orton with Riddle. While both of those teams have seemingly worked, the ultimate irony is how little WWE tends to make use of tag teams.

Plus, knowing that they had a self-inflicted talent void on RAW, they took a returning Superstar and tabbed him for…SmackDown.

There could be other changes. Maybe we won’t see any changes.

But don’t be shocked if we see Aleister Black pop up on RAW instead of SmackDown.

AEW Changing Channels Soon

Speaking of changes, AEW is going to be changing channels soon.

How soon? Well based on reports, it looks like the change of channels is slated to happen at the beginning of 2022.

AEW Dynamite, the company’s flagship show, currently airs on Turner’s TNT channel.

In January of 2022, it is planned to shift Dynamite over to TBS, another of Turner’s broadcasting options.

Part of the motivation for this is a response to the ever-changing television landscape. With recent sports television deals, there has been a lot of shuffling of shows.

For one example, NXT moved from USA on Wednesdays and is now getting cozy with Tuesday nights. Some say this was a means to get NXT away from a losing battle with AEW, but that probably didn’t factor into it as much.

Comcast NBCUniversal made the decision to eliminate their Sports channel, consolidating those offerings across it’s plethora of broadcast options.

Something had to give…

Wednesday nights had always been massively important for the NHL on NBC, with those games airing on the nearly defunct NBCSports. While the channel goes away, the games do not…and shifting to USA made a lot of sense.

In the same mind, TNT and TBS had similar adjusting to do, and moving AEW Dynamite from one channel to another in the same family is the result.

There will naturally be concerns on whether fans will migrate from one channel to the other. I’d bet most will, unless they actually somehow don’t get TBS.

That was an issue in years past with WWE moves, such as when RAW went from USA to TNN, as not every fan got that channel.

On the upside, per later updates, AEW will still have a future show on TNT-including some specials.

Look at this as a significant expansion, more than a change…and the future seems quite bright for AEW.