Twitter account The Fight Oracle, a media analyst, announced on Wednesday night that WarnerMedia (formerly known as Time Warner before being acquired by AT&T) is planning on presenting All Elite Wrestling (AEW) to its advertisers on May 15th at their upfronts meeting. For those not sure what an “upfront” means, according to Wikipedia, it’s “a gathering at the start of important advertising sales periods, held by television network executives and attended by major advertisers and the media. It is so named because of its main purpose, to allow marketers to buy television commercial airtime “up front”, or several months before the television season begins.”
https://twitter.com/fightoracle/status/1116120237844332544
This would align with rumored reports for months that AEW was entertaining several major cable networks for the impending weekly TV show, speculated to be the trademark Tuesday Night Dynamite that they applied for last year, with two WarnerMedia channels, TBS and TNT, the frontrunners. Last week, newly hired AEW Senior Advisor Jim Ross let it slip that a deal was set to be announced and that they would be debuting in October. The reason for the October launch would be to coincide with WWE’s SmackDown Live moving from Tuesday nights to Friday night when it shifts from USA Network to FOX Sports that month. With a fall launch for AEW’s Tuesday Night Dynamite, an upfronts presentation in May would seem to lend credence to Ross’ comments.
For what it’s worth, Pro Wrestling Sheet‘s Ryan Satin confirmed he had heard similar reports over the weekend but had yet to confirm himself.
I heard the same thing over the weekend from a trustworthy source, but hadn’t been able to work on confirming yet since I’ve been sick since getting home.
— Ryan Satin (@ryansatin) April 11, 2019
