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This is a major positive for fans attending the ceremonies on Saturday 4/2 as the event will not longer be forced to curtail inductions and acceptance speeches in order to insure that WWE's production team can have the one hour broadcast edited and completed in time for a broadcast the same evening.
In recent years, the editing to the special has caused speeches to be edited down to basically nothing during broadcasts (Bret Hart in 2006) and for speeches to be stopped before the speaker was finished (Ric Flair in 2008) in order to film the closing "confetti raining down" moments of the ceremony.
In 2009, the company instituted strict time restrictions for both those inducting Hall of Famers and for those accepting their honors. While this allowed for a shorter run time of the show for the production team, it also forced wrestlers who had worked for decades to attempt to shrink their entire body of work into a short five minute speech. Doing so really hurt the heart and soul of the event and made it far less memorable and emotional in many cases.
The change in plans to air the Hall will provide the company with the best of both worlds - having a longer, special evening for those in attendance (and something more substantial to accentuate the Wrestlemania DVD set) as well as providing the company's TV Production team more leeway to edit the festivities down into a one hour version of the ceremony.
Let's hope this is a new standard for the event, which has been one of the best nights of the year in the past.
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