World Championship Wrestling
World Championship Wrestling (WCW) was a professional wrestling company and also the name of a 2-hour wrestling show on TBS created by Ted Turner in 1982.
History
One of the earliest shows to be broadcast on Ted Turner's WTBS station was World Championship Wrestling, airing at 6:05 in the afternoon. Wrestling had aired on the channel since 1972. World Championship Wrestling was taped in Atlanta, Georgia, at WTBS' studios at 1050 Techwood Drive until 1989, when the taping location was moved to the Center Stage Theater, in Atlanta. In 1988, Turner started the company World Championship Wrestling, named after the show. The show was then called WCW Saturday Night in 1992. WCW grew bigger with wrestlers such as Ric Flair, Sting, Arn Anderson, Lex Luger, The Steiner Brothers, Vader and Ron Simmons. In 1995, a Monday night show was added called WCW Monday Nitro to compete with the World Wrestling Federation and it's flagship show Raw in what became known as the Monday Night Wars winning until 1998.
Ted Turner lost control of his networks TBS and TNT in October 1996.[1] He still was in charge of day-to-day operations of the Turner channels and WCW, but Time Warner had majority ownership over it, so basically any major decisions had to be approved by them.[2] WCW began to decline in 1998 and got significantly worse after an event called the Fingerpoke of Doom on the first Nitro of 1999.[3] In January 2001, AOL merged with Time Warner and Ted Turner was forced out of TNT, TBS and WCW.[2] The new owners decided not to show wrestling anymore. Turner still supported wrestling, but Time Warner didn't and in the end WCW was bought out by the World Wrestling Federation who shut it down.
The video library and copyrights were bought by WWE on March 23, 2001.[4] WWE Classics On Demand continues to show episodes of the original World Championship Wrestling program.
References
- ↑ "When did Ted Turner lose control of CNN? - AnandTech Forums". Archived from the original on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2012-06-02.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 http://en.allexperts.com/q/Pro-Wrestling-1847/2008/5/Eric-Bischoff-WCW.htm[dead link]
- ↑ NeptuneNetwork (16 February 2009). "NeptuneNetwork Presents: WCW 'Classics': The Infamous Fingerpoke Of Doom" – via YouTube.
- ↑ "WWF buys World Championship Wrestling - Mar. 23, 2001". money.cnn.com.