Earlier today, Variety reported that Saturday Night's Main Event returns to NBC, with a simulcast on Peacock, on December 14, 2024 at 8 p.m. Eastern. The show will run from the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, N.Y., which is where the very first SNME ran from in May of 1985.
AEW has Worlds End, their end-of-the-year pay-per-view scheduled for December 28, so the two shows won't run head-to-head.
Saturday Night's Main Event was the brainchild of Dick Ebersol and Vince McMahon with the very first episode opening up with Cyndi Lauper and Wendi Richter and Hulk Hogan and Mr. T in interviews. It aired on weeks in which Saturday Night Live didn't have new episodes.
The very first episode aired just over a month after the original WrestleMania and featured Hulk Hogan vs. Cowboy Bob Orton in the main event.
This is the first of what is scheduled to be four quarterly prime time specials for WWE on NBC. When WWE tried to relaunch the brand in the mid-2000s, it wasn't successful because of the way that their television had changed. Back in the first run of the series, the then WWF ran mostly in syndication without competitive matches. By the mid-2000s, RAW and SmackDown were the more important shows and Saturday Night's Main Event wasn't special or unique compared to what they were already doing.
They will need to make the return of the series more inline with what they would do on their premium live events in order to draw viewership. If the shows aren't as important as their weekly television, they won't be can't miss.
