WWE Wrestling tour tickets SmackDown! as it was originally titled first appeared on April 29, 1999 as a single television special on UPN. On August 26, 1999, SmackDown! officially debuted on UPN, in Kansas City, Missouri. Like WCW Thunder, SmackDown! was recorded on Tuesdays and then broadcast on Thursdays. The new WWF show was so popular that WCW moved Thunder to Wednesdays in the hope of holding on to fans rather than losing them to WWF. SmackDown!, like Thunder, made heavy use of the color blue, earning it the nickname "The Blue Show" amongst wrestling fans.
On January 7, 2009, WWE Wrestling announced that all 3 brands (Raw, SmackDown!, and ECW) would be broadcast in HD, codenamed "WWE HD" starting with Raw on January 21. WWE Wrestling invested an estimate of about $20 million dollars on new recording and broadcasting equipment to prepare for the move, as well as new pyrotechnics and lighting. The move replaced the Raw, SmackDown!, and ECW sets with a new state of the art set shared by all brands.
WWE Raw claimed to have earned the distinction of having the most original episodes of any fictional weekly program on August 2, 2005 when it broadcasted the 636th episode. It was said to have took the place of Gunsmoke, which held that distinction. However, under the criteria WWE Wrestling used to make this claim, the actual record would be held by the show Georgia Championship Wrestling, which ran continuously on Saturday evenings on TBS between 1972 and 1984. That said, Raw went on to surpass the Georgia Championship WWE Wrestling concert tickets record as they now have produced well over 750 episodes.
At the start of the ratings war in 1995 through to mid-1996, Raw and Nitro exchanged victories over each other in a closely contested rivalry. Beginning in mid-1996, however, thanks primarily to the nWo angle, Monday Nitro started a ratings win-streak that lasted for eighty-four continuous weeks, ending on April 13, 1998.
WWE Wrestling tour tickets SmackDown! as it was originally titled first appeared on April 29, 1999 as a single television special on UPN. On August 26, 1999, SmackDown! officially debuted on UPN, in Kansas City, Missouri. Like WCW Thunder, SmackDown! was recorded on Tuesdays and then broadcast on Thursdays. The new WWF show was so popular that WCW moved Thunder to Wednesdays in the hope of holding on to fans rather than losing them to WWF. SmackDown!, like Thunder, made heavy use of the color blue, earning it the nickname "The Blue Show" amongst wrestling fans.
