Tony Khan on Plans For AEW’s Third Hour on TNT, Says It’s Not Dark, Talks AEW’s Relationship With TNT

During the media call this week promoting AEW All Out, Tony Khan discussed the company’s plans for their expansion on TNT as well as their relationship with the company. There’s been a lot of speculation on the latter topic after WarnerMedia announced that Kevin Reilly, a key AEW ally, was leaving as part of their organizational shakeup. Khan said that their relationship with WarnerMedia and TNT was great and dispelled the notion that AEW Dark will be moved to TNT for its third hour; you can check out highlights and the full audio below:

On AEW’s relationship with TNT: “It’s funny, because I speak to them a lot and they’ve actually, I’ve had texts from top executives at Warner because we talk so much about promoting the show and about ideas, they’ve actually texted while I’ve been on the call with you guys. And it’s a great relationship, and like I said it’s the lifeblood of our company, our media partnership.”

On initial statements that AEW Dark would be the third hour: “Kevin [Reilly] at the time, when he was saying Dark, that was not accurate. We were not going to bring Dark as the third hour, and we had communicated that, but it was a miscommunication. I think Kevin misunderstoof some of the materials. Dark was doing very, very well and I think is doing very, very well. And Dark has actually risen since this conversation we had with Kevin. But [the agreement was] that we would do a totally different third hour, and keep Dark on YouTube. And that is still the plan, and that show will be launched in the next year.

On when the show may launch: “I don’t have an exact date, I can promise you it will be in the next year, but I don’t know exactly when. And there’s a lot of work that’s gonna go into it that still needs to be done in terms of market testing, you know? There’s a lot that goes into launching a show, and before it’ll go on network television, we’ll have to do all that work.

“I think that frankly, as far as doing that market research and putting together a launch plan, the pandemic sidetracked us on that. And it made it more difficult, and as far as people developing shows and working on them, a lot of shows have been slowed down … I don’t know exactly when, but as things are starting to hopefully get more and more normal, and as hopefully the country keeps trending in a better direction hopefully, in terms of going back to work, we’ll definitely be launching the show soon.”

you use any of the quote in this article, please credit AEW with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.