WWE Heat

WWE Heat (formerly known as WWE Sunday Night Heat) is a professional wrestling show for World Wrestling Entertainment, showcasing talent from the Raw roster with lower-card matches.

It is currently being streamed on WWE.com on Friday afternoons for North American viewers. However, the show is still televised internationally and shows in the United Kingdom on Sky Sports 3, Indonesia on Lativi, Australia on FOX8, India on Ten Sports, Latin America on FX, Germany on Premiere Sport Portal, and the Philippines on Jack TV.

It has been previously aired on USA Network, MTV and Spike TV in the United States, Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and CTV Sportsnet in Canada.

History
The show was originally introduced as WWF Sunday Night Heat on the USA Network in 1998. The one hour show would be broadcasted live on Sunday nights at 7pm Eastern. It was the second most important show in the WWF line-up serving as a supplement to the Monday Night RAW program. HEAT would feature promos, vignettes and in-ring action just like RAW, and in many ways, it was what SmackDown! was to RAW from 1999 to 2002. Upper mid-card and main event wrestlers were no strangers to HEAT, appearing each week. Storylines from the previous week would progress during the show, and the next day's RAW would be heavily promoted. The show itself was a big ratings draw for the USA Network trailing not too far behind the big numbers of RAW.

With the advent of SmackDown in 1999, HEAT has significantly decreased in importance as well as ratings. The debut of SmackDown! also led to HEAT being taped before SmackDown with matches for WWF syndication programs like Jakked/Metal to be taped before RAW broadcasts. Near the peak of WWE's popularity and as part of WWE's television deal with Viacom, the show was moved to MTV. WWE has also aired two special editions of Halftime HEAT which aired during halftime of Super Bowl XXXIII on USA Network. These specials ended following the movement of HEAT to MTV. In 2000, the current logo and theme song was adopted.

Since the brand extension in 2002, HEAT has been broadcast with only RAW superstars and reverted back to being before RAW. The exception to this was on pay-per-view nights, which were broadcast live from the pay-per-view venue and could involve SmackDown! wrestlers. In May 2002, SmackDown! branched off its own sister show, Velocity, which mirrored the same characteristics as HEAT.

Now, WWE tends to use this program to showcase the talent that they do not use frequently on RAW. Fans often refer to this show as the minor leagues, a B-Show, for the wrestlers on the show are usually at the beginning or the end of their careers in WWE. Occasionally, main eventers and champions will appear on the show, and usually win. HEAT is also used to review the main events that happened on the previous edition of Raw.

When SmackDown premiered in August 1999, HEAT briefly became a complete recap show, with exclusive interviews and feuds recapped as music videos. This only lasted a few weeks, and the show began airing exclusive matches again, this time taping before SmackDown.

When the show started airing on MTV in late 2000, it was broadcast live from WWF New York. WWF Superstars would appear at the restaurant as special guests while Michael Cole & Tazz would call pre-taped matches live. This practice ended in 2002 and the show reverted to its original format of taping the matches, again before RAW and have the commentators call the action and have it burned to the matches.

Steven Richards, who at one time was the most regular competitor on Sunday Night HEAT, dubbed himself "General Manager of HEAT" (though he carried out no GM duties) and began calling the show Stevie Night HEAT.

HEAT and Velocity were not picked up by the USA Network when WWE moved its programming over to that network in October 2005, leaving Americans no way to watch WWE weekend shows on television. To solve this problem, WWE decided to stream the shows on their website exclusively for the US audience, with new editions posted every Friday afternoon. Velocity was eventually axed when ECW was resurrected in 2006, and Sunday Night HEAT was soon renamed to WWE HEAT, as it no longer aired on Sundays.

After a while, HEAT was changed to Heat to be equal to the Raw brand without capitialization in the name. Heat is still shown overseas to fulfill international programming commitments. For a while, a special 30-minute live edition of Heat began airing in place of the traditional pre-taped Free For All PPV preshow, although this is no longer the case. As Heat is taped before Raw, Heat uses the same set as Raw (ring ropes, TitanTron, ramp) with the only exception being the Heat logos on the TitanTron and the MiniTron. Since the shows debut on WWE.com, it has been broken up into 4 segments (each match). On February 16, 2007 on Heat's website for the latest edition of Heat, it was shown that now audiences can watch the show in one whole go or continue watching the four segments.

Commentators and hosts
There have been many commentators in the history of Heat. Industry veterans and RAW broadcasters Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler have done commentary on the show. The show was also the launchpad for Shane McMahon's on-camera career in WWE, originally placed in the role of a commentator for the program. In October 2000, the show was hosted by Rebecca Budig and MTV VJ/Rapper DJ Skribble when it moved from USA Network to MTV.

During pay-per-view events and often outside the stadium, hosts introduce segments of the show, recently the hosts of The WWE Experience (Ivory and Todd Grisham) perform these duties. If a SmackDown brand pay-per-view takes place, SmackDown's main show announcers host the in-ring commentary for the show.

Often wrestlers would take the role of color commentators on the show with Al Snow, Tommy Dreamer, Raven, and D'Lo Brown all holding this position mostly as a replacement for an announce who was unavailable. During the show's run on MTV, diva Lita also served as a commentator following her major neck injury.

Before the WWE-produced, Extreme Championship Wrestling reunion pay-per-view, One Night Stand 2005 took place, a special Extreme HEAT episode was broadcast and hosted by Jonathan Coachman and Michael Cole.

During one episode when Jonathan Coachman was unavailable, former ECW announcer (and then-lead RAW announcer) Joey Styles took part in the show. However, Styles then quit on the following monday's' RAW, meaning Grisham ran the show alone.

Commentator history

 * Shane McMahon - (1998 - 2000)
 * Michael Cole - (1998 - 2002, 2005)
 * Kevin Kelly - (1998 - 2000)
 * Tazz - (2000 - 2001)
 * Jonathan Coachman - (2001 - present)
 * Raven - (2001 - 2002)
 * Al Snow - (2001 - 2004)
 * Michael Hayes - (2001 - 2002)
 * D'Lo Brown - (2002 - 2003)
 * Lita - (2002 - 2003)
 * Todd Grisham - (2004 - present)
 * Tommy Dreamer - (2006)
 * Joey Styles - (2006)
 * Jim Ross - (2006)
 * Steve Romero - (2006)
 * Josh Matthews - (2007)