The WWE has announced that they will be holding the 1,000th episode of SmackDown Live on Tuesday, October 16th.
The milestone episode will take place from the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., and will air on the USA Network.
The show was launched in 1999 following a successful pilot edition in April on UPN. The series officially began on Thursday nights in August to compliment Monday’s edition of Raw with the company taping television on Monday and Tuesday nights from that point.
SmackDown performed extremely well for the fledgling UPN and within one year, WCW moved their Thursday night “Thunder” program to Wednesdays.
In 2005, SmackDown was moved to Friday nights, where it would remain until 2015 despite several changes in networks. UPN and the WB were merged together to form the CW Network, then SmackDown went to MyNetworkTV in 2008 and on to SyFy in 2010, who moved SmackDown back to Thursday at the start of 2015. In 2016, they moved to the USA Network and moved to a live format on Tuesday nights in July 2016 to coincide with the second brand split.
SmackDown will remain on the USA Network through the end of September 2019 before it moves to Fox as they enter a five-year deal worth $205 million per year for the rights to the show. The move to Fox will also see the show return to Friday nights.
