There has been a shake-up in the writing teams of WWE television today, which has been brewing for some time.

Ryan Ward, who had been the lead writer for SmackDown, is out, officially called a personal leave. In recent weeks the SmackDown scripts have been heavily edited by Vince McMahon and it was known some type of change on the SmackDown side was inevitable.

Ed Koskey, who had been the head writer of Raw, is being moved to SmackDown, and will be working with Eric Bischoff. Koskey has been with the company for more than 18 years and has been a key writer for more than a decade and is currently Vice President of Creative Writing.

The writing teams for Raw and SmackDown are being split before the official talent split comes the second week of October.

Jonathan Baeckstrom has taken over as the lead writer for Raw. He will work under Paul Heyman. Baeckstrom had been the lead writer for 205 Live since November 2016, although he had been moved from the show when Heyman brought him in when he started being in charge of Raw.