WWE: New Kids Show Debuting After SummerSlam

An article in the L.A. Times has confirmed the rumors of the WWE debuting a new Saturday morning show and the new show will debut much sooner than anticipated as the show will arrive after SummerSlam in two weeks. The new WWE show will be called, “WWE Saturday Morning Slam”, and will be geared towards WWE’s 12 and under audience. The article reveals that WWE Saturday Morning Slam will be a 30-minute show that will air on the CW Network (the former home of SmackDown) and the show will feature one match with the rest of the show will be dedicated to promoting WWE’s Be A Star campaign and will also have backstage segments and other features that will be revealed in the weeks to come. It is unclear whether the match featured on the show will be a reran match from RAW or SmackDown or whether WWE will be taping a match especially for the show.

The CW Network currently airs a block of children and young teen’s programming called, “4KidsTV”, but the L.A. Times article reports that billionaire company, Saban Brands, will debut a new five-hour block of programming on Saturday mornings called, “Vortexx”, which will feature ‘action-charged’ characters. While this new block of programming will feature shows like the Power Rangers, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Dragon Ball Z Kai, WWE Saturday Morning Slam will serve as the ‘anchor’ of the block with the WWE and Saban Brands relying on the 30-minute show to revive the fledgling Saturday morning programming block. This will mark the first time in 11 years that the WWE has had a show air on Saturday mornings and is WWE’s first show made exclusively for children and young teens (which is around 22% of WWE’s overall audience).

Saban Brands President and Vortexx Vice President Elie Dekel commented on the new show, saying, “There is a lot of movement in viewer habits and we see this as an important business opportunity to establish a new brand. Our focus on the boys’ adventure space will be a differentiator for us on Saturday mornings.” Senior Vice President for WWE Creative and Development Eric Pankowski added, “Children make up a huge, huge component of our audience. We are very sensitive to the fact that we are speaking to an audience of children. We want to make sure that the content that we put on at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning is appropriate for younger audiences and we will be baking into our content, such as our pro-social ‘Be A Star’ anti-bullying campaign.”

4Kids Entertainment, which currently provides the Toonzai block of programming from 7AM-12PM on Saturday mornings, filed for bankruptcy in April of last year and has since sold the rights to it’s programming to various different outlets. The company filed for bankruptcy to protect itself from a lawsuit from the creators of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise. Toonzai currently airs one episode of the Cubix series and the other four and half hours consist of episodes of Dragon Ball Z Kai. Since the sale of its programming and crippling financial state, CBS Corp and Warner Bros. Television created the Vortexx block, which will replace Toonzai beginning on August 25 and a countdown page can be found at the future internet home of Vortexx at myvortexx.com.

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