ECW tapings moving nights, Sunday Night Heat being cancelled

Beginning in June, WWE will be moving the ECW tapings to Monday nights before Raw. The new taping schedule is scheduled to start at the 6/23 Raw in San Antonio, following a company tour of Australia.

Due to the change, WWE is pulling the plug on WWE Heat altogether. WWE recently informed international television affiliates that a WWE Classics series utilizing old wrestling footage would be replacing Heat shortly.

Basically, the move was made to increase the fans' awareness with the ECW brand. WWE plans on having ECW names appear on Raw and Raw stars making guest appearances on Sci Fi.

Now that the ECW performers will be performing at the Raw tapings, that pretty much means that the brand's talent exchange with SmackDown is over. No word yet if WWE plans on doing a talent exchange between Raw and ECW for TV, although one would assume that ECW talents would be joining Raw house shows as well, but that has yet to be confirmed.

The plan for SmackDown is to do stand-alone two-hour TV tapings, not to mention house shows only featuring SmackDown talent instead of both SmackDown & ECW talent.

Source: www.rajah.com