Heat and Velocity are staying! Sort of........

[Dave Youell]

Wrestling Observer

At the tapings this past week, wrestlers who fell into the Heat/Velocity category were told not to worry about being let go as the company was going to continue both shows to fulfill international programming commitments. Before this week, company sources had expected another round of talent cutbacks coinciding with the dropping of the shows.

This reverses the original decision made some time back when the USA Network declined picking up the shows, that they would be discontinued at the end of this month, even though many international contracts called for additional hours of weekly programming.

According to the Ross Report today, the WWE web site was going to make an announcement regarding the future of both shows, which seems to confirm the shows will continue in some form. If USA Network still won't pick them up, there is a chance the shows could be used as web content. WWE had talked of expanding web content with original matches at the last investors conference. Syndication could be another option. WWE had made the decision very suddenly to get out of the syndication business this summer. If the company is already producing the shows for international, the costs of syndicating it to stations that wanted to continue WWE weekend programming isn't that much.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

So not great, but at least we get some decent wrestling each week still