The plan to air AEW Dynamite live on Wednesday nights in the UK was being described as “done” up until this weekend when something fell through. There’s no official word as to what happened, but there is speculation that it had something to do with the commercial breaks. In the US, AEW is expected to have 16-minutes worth of commercial time, however, only 12 minutes is allowed in the UK on broadcast TV. This means that AEW would need to air at least 8-minutes of material not shown in the US to meet those requirements.

WWE is able to air in the UK without having to change their commercial allotment because Skynet doesn’t take place on broadcast television. Skynet doesn’t have any restrictions on commercials.

The deal to go live in the UK was said to be so close that the original plan for Fite.TV was to exclude the US, Canada, and the UK. Once the plans fell through, AEW added them to the list of places that can pick up AEW Dynamite on Fite.TV earlier this week. The fact that Canada is still excluded likely means that AEW still believes they’ll get a deal to air there live soon.

Being on ITV in the UK is considered to be a huge deal for AEW. Some people within AEW are satisfied with this schedule because they believe AEW will get far better ratings airing on Monday nights than it would airing it live.

Another issue is that ITV on Sunday mornings is regulated for family viewing. When AEW airs on Sunday mornings, it’ll be heavily edited to meet their strict requirements due to the original show being TV-14. There’s some speculation that once the adult themes are edited out, there will be enough time to insert UK-exclusive content.

AEW will begin airing on ITV on Sunday, October 6 at 8:20am with the full two-hour premiere, which airs here in the United States on Wednesday, October 2 at 8pm. There will also be a one-hour Dynamite highlights show on Monday, October 7 at 11:45pm. ITV will also carry the AEW pay-per-view events, beginning with Full Gear on Saturday, November 9.

(credit: f4wonline.com)