WWE: 7 Reasons SmackDown Should Remain on Friday Nights

Since 2005, the WWE has held SmackDown on Friday nights.

But ever since Thursday Night SmackDown became known as "Friday Night SmackDown," the debate has been ongoing: Should SmackDown stay on Friday nights or move to another night of the week?

Many wrestling fans have suggested a switch back to Thursdays to go head-to-head with Impact or for SmackDown to become a live Tuesday show.

Every day of the week has its pros and cons, but I'm here to tell you why SmackDown is right where it belongs.

Here are seven reasons why SmackDown should remain on Friday nights.

7. Fans Have Grown Accustomed to SmackDown on Fridays

We are creatures of habit.

Wrestling fans turn on their TVs every Monday night because they know that Raw is on, while football fans do the same because they know that Monday Night Football is on.

Imagine how an NFL fan would react if Monday Night Football suddenly became "Wednesday Night Football." 

That would be weird, right?

Well, it's the same situation with Friday Night Smackdown.

The title of the show even states that it airs on Fridays, and as creatures of habit, we tune into SmackDown on Fridays because we know that's when it's going to air.

We wrestling fans have grown accustomed to seeing SmackDown on Fridays, and it would be a huge adjustment to have to go from watching the show one night of the week to watching it on a completely different one.

Plus, there's the potential that moving SmackDown off Friday nights will alienate a number of wrestling fans and actually prevent some of them (especially those without DVR) from watching the show at all.

6. Holding It on Tuesdays Would Be WWE Overload

Just think about this scenario for a minute or two.

On July 23, Raw is going to move to a three-hour format, and let's say that a couple of months down the road SmackDown moves to Tuesdays (a move to Tuesday seems to be popular among fans) in its traditional two-hour format.

That would mean that every week we'd get five hours of WWE programming in a span of roughly 24 hours.

It's asking a lot of WWE fans to expect them to be interested in and remain attentive while watching that much WWE TV in such a short time frame.

On pay-per-view weeks, it's even worse.

You'd have a three-hour PPV, a three-hour Raw and a two-hour SmackDown for a total of eight hours of TV in a roughly 48-hour period.

I'm not sure any WWE fan could invest in five hours of WWE programming in a really short span, much less eight.

This would indeed be WWE overload.

5. There Is More TV Competition on Other Days of the Week

Traditionally, Fridays and Saturdays are the worst nights of the week for TV viewership.

So, what's this mean for SmackDown? Well, it means that if you move it to another night of the week, it's going to be facing much more competition.

It doesn't matter if SmackDown were to move to Tuesdays, Thursdays or even Wednesdays.

The bottom line is that each of those nights features more TV shows and, more specifically, more highly watched TV shows than Friday likely ever will.

You've got shows like NCIS on Tuesdays, Law and Order: SVU on Wednesdays, The Big Bang Theory and Thursday Night Football (fall only) on Thursdays, etc.

Does SmackDown really expect to compete with those shows, which generate some of the highest ratings of their respective nights?

I sure don't think so.

Call me crazy, but I just think it would be dumb of the WWE to move to a night of the week in which it would be facing more fierce competition than it would on Fridays.

4. Tuesday Night Smackdown Would Create a Huge Gap Between WWE Shows

Many fans are clamoring for SmackDown to move to Tuesdays permanently as a live show.

But here's one of the biggest problems that would create for the WWE: A huge gap between its two flagship shows.

With the way things are currently situated (Raw on Mondays and SmackDown on Fridays), you have a perfect balance of WWE TV on non-PPV weeks.

There's Raw, a three-day break, SmackDown, a two-day break and then the cycle starts over again.

If you move SmackDown to Tuesdays, though, you'd have a massive absence of WWE programming throughout the vast majority of the week.

It would be Raw on Monday, SmackDown on Tuesday and then a five-day span with no WWE programming whatsoever. Every week.

That wouldn't work, partly because of the "WWE overload" I talked about earlier and partly because five straight days without any mainstream WWE shows is just far too long.

3. The Advantages of Having a Recorded Show

There are certainly advantages to having SmackDown as a live show, but the advantages of it being a taped one can't be overlooked.

A lot of wrestling fans who want SmackDown to go live completely ignore the fact that taping it and airing it later usually produces a better show.

There are just so many things that the WWE can go back and edit in post-production for SmackDown that it can't do on Raw.

If a match doesn't go well, the WWE can just re-tape it. If a match takes place and the WWE decides it wants to do something different, it can completely edit that match out of the broadcast.

If a wrestler badly botches a move, he can simply do it again and have the WWE's video team edit the botch so that it won't appear on the actual show.

Of course, there are a number of other advantages to SmackDown being taped.

It can give a commentator a chance to re-do any botched commentary, it can allow the WWE to re-shoot promos and re-enter them into the show, etc.

Think about any major screw-ups you've seen on live Raw or SmackDown shows, then think about how much better a certain segment or match would have been had the botches been edited out.

See what I mean?

2. SmackDown's Ratings on Tuesdays Have Struggled

If you think that SmackDown's ratings would instantly and drastically improve on Tuesdays, you're sadly mistaken.

As history tells us, that's not the case at all.

From PWTorch.com:

"

WWE's live Super Smackdown episode on Tuesday, April 10, scored a 1.50 rating, down four-tenths of a rating from a 1.90 rating for the previous Smackdown on Friday, April 6.

The episode was also down nearly two-tenths of a rating from the previous live special on Tuesday, February 21, which scored a 1.67 rating.

Smackdown averaged 2.25 million viewers, down 500,000 viewers from Friday's episode. Smackdown also continued a precipitous decline with the live specials, as the show was down approximately 100,000 viewers from the previous live special on Feb. 21. Going back to the first live Tuesday night special in August 2011, this week's episode was down nearly one million viewers.

Live Smackdown Decline

8/30/11—2.20 rating / 3.20 million viewers
11/29/11—2.00 rating / 3.05 million viewers
2/21/12—1.67 rating / 2.37 million viewers
4/10/12—1.50 rating / 2.25 million viewers

"

As you can see, the first Tuesday Night SmackDown did really well in the ratings department, but those ratings steadily declined from there on out.

From the first SmackDown special to the fourth one, there was a .7 drop in the ratings, which translates to a loss of nearly one million viewers.

What's perhaps even more disturbing is that the April 10th live Tuesday Night SmackDown took a .4 dip from the April 6th Friday Night SmackDown just four days prior.

Although you might be able to blame some on this on poor marketing, you can't deny that the early interest in live Tuesday SmackDowns has dropped off considerably.

In fact, one could argue that SmackDown's poor performances on Tuesdays thus far indicates that the WWE shouldn't even consider moving the show to Tuesdays on a permanent basis. 

1. It's Doing Just Fine on Fridays

There seems to be this notion that just because SmackDown isn't popping 3.0 ratings on Friday night it should be considered a failure.

That's not the case at all. In fact, SmackDown is performing extremely well on Fridays.

According to WWE.com, "Friday Night SmackDown is regularly Syfy’s most-watched program every week and was the most-watched regularly scheduled program on prime-time cable Friday nights among males under 65 in the third quarter of 2011."

Not too shabby, huh?

And even to this day, SmackDown is one of the most popular shows on Friday nights.

A report from TV By the Numbers shows that SmackDown was the third-most watched TV show on all of cable on June 4th.

A whopping 2,557,000 viewers tuned into that SmackDown, third only to ESPN's SportsCenter and ESPN's coverage of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.

So, can we please stop acting like SmackDown is in the "Friday night death slot?"

As the numbers show, that simply isn't true.

Drake Oz is a WWE Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions on Formspring.