Last night in Las Vegas at The WWE Network announcement event, NXT had a prominent place in the presentation. The show, dedicated to featuring the most polished members of WWE's developmental program and the Performance Center in Florida, was featured as an example of original content that will be available on the new over-the-top service.
Currently, the program films approximately a month's worth of shows at a time at Full Sail Live on the campus of partner Full Sail University in Winter Park, FL. It was at one of those tapings tonight that Chief Operating Officer Triple H made a few big announcements about the show's future.
The first episode of NXT to air on The Network will be on Thursday, February 27th - three days after the service launches. Furthermore, that show will be live - and it sounds like live NXT will be the standard going forward.
Earlier in the day, there were rumors that the program would get a live special shortly after The Network's launch. That would have been treated as an "NXT pay-per-view". No word yet if Hunter's announcement tonight is in addition to that, or if that tidbit was a muddled message that actually originated from tonight's news.
This is a huge opportunity for the show, which is poised to rise in prominence in the new landscape. With titles unifying on the broadcast shows, NXT may even turn into the alternative brand that the brand split was never able to produce.
Further, broadcasting live will be great practice for the future stars of the live Monday night Raw and Smackdown, which could become a live show under a new television contract.
One of the charms of NXT for the last few years has been that it flew under the radar, thereby avoiding the seat-of-the-pants booking, recaps and pushes for part-time muscle men that plague the broadcast shows. With an increase in importance to the company's overall plans, it's realistic to question if the bookers of the show will be able to maintain the same latitude.
More on this as news comes out from official company channels. Are you worried about NXT changing? Or will the increased prominence be just what the show needed to reach the next level?