The NBA playoffs are about to wreak havoc on AEW Dynamite’s television schedule

The NBA’s regular season is wrapping up this weekend, which means the playoffs are starting soon. The playoff schedule will then stretch into July. Given the TNT network’s partnership with the NBA, this means there are multiple episodes of AEW Dynamite that will be bumped out of its regular 8 to 10 PM ET time slot on Wednesday nights.

The Wrestling Observer Newsletter explains what this means for AEW over the next month.

The first change will occur with the go-home show for Double or Nothing. Instead of airing on Wed., May 26, that episode will be moved to Fri., May 28, at 10 PM ET. Thursday is unavailable that week due to more NBA playoffs, and going head-to-head with SmackDown on FOX at 8 PM ET is not ideal.

For the same reason, it looks like the following week’s episode will also be moved from Wed., Jun. 2, to Fri., Jun. 4.

The NBA still has playoff games scheduled for the three Wednesdays after that (Jun. 9, Jun. 16, Jun. 23). It’s a little too far out to know for sure what the exact schedule will look like, but Thursday nights might be open to AEW those weeks. Late Wednesday night telecasts might also be possible.

Having Dynamite’s Wednesday night schedule thrown off for potentially up to five consecutive weeks sounds like a major pain in the ass for AEW. They didn’t have to deal with this problem last May or June because the NBA was shut down at this time.

Given that next week’s (May 19) episode of Dynamite will probably be the last one airing in its normal Wednesday night time slot for a few weeks, I think I better understand why AEW crammed so many angles for Double or Nothing into last week’s show. It makes more sense to shoot those angles before viewership numbers go wacky with the schedule changes coming up.