March Madness will bump Rampage to late night

Reports about this were floating around over the weekend, and TNT’s planned coverage of the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament made it pretty obvious. But now that the channel’s updated their online schedule through next weekend, it’s been confirmed.

The Mar. 18 Rampage is listed for 11:30pm Eastern. It should be safe to set your DVR for that time, but it’s possible AEW’s Friday night show will air even later. If the game with the 9:20pm tip-off that Rampage will follow goes to overtime (or is itself pushed to a later start time by an earlier game in the same venue running long), the entire schedule could shift outward.

So don’t expect the ratings for next Friday to be great. Tony Khan could book the pre-taped show accordingly (it’ll be filmed after the Mar. 16 Dynamite in San Antonio, a Saint Patrick’s Day Slam edition which already has two title matches booked on it). But AEW knows a lot of people don’t watch Rampage during its initial airing anyway, so TK will probably treat this like any other show regardless of the even worse than normal start time.

We’ll keep you posted.