Old School Osborn
06-13-2011, 12:50 PM
I've heard it said that the AOL/Time Warner merger, not bad ratings or writing, is what killed WCW.
I'm here to say that the merger didn't kill WCW. It put WCW out of its misery.
In short, WCW was cancelled because it stopped being a big ratings winner. Back in 1997, WCW was making millions of dollars and was so far ahead of WWF that it wasn't even funny. Bischoff will tell you all the time that he beat WWF for what, 86 or so weeks in a row? In short, they were dominating and making a ton of money.
Then things slowly began to turn around on them, with I believe the blow coming at Starrcade 97, but that's an argument for a later thread. The fans got ticked off after seeing Sting still not be able to win the title as it went to Hogan again in late April. On April 6, Raw won a night in the ratings and for all intents and purposes never looked back. In the roughly 150 battles in the Monday Night Wars after that (3 years, 50 weeks a year for the sake of a round number), WCW won a total of 9 head to head matches, or roughly 6% of the time. They didn't win for approximately two and a half years, or 125 weeks in a row (approximately) by the end of the company.
By the beginning of the year 2000, Vince Russo was running things. WWF had gone through the roof with the reign of Steve Austin and the rise of guys like The Rock and HHH to the main event. They were now a publically traded company and were thrashing WCW in the ratings week in and week out. The Radicals jumped to the WWF in January/February and soon everyone was leaving. David Arquette was made world champion, there was the Hogan/Russo "shoot" thing at Bash at the Beach and everything fell apart. If I remember correctly, at one point over a 52 week period, WCW lost over a million dollars a week on average.
Think about that for a minute. A million dollars is a lot of money. WCW was managing to lose that every 7 days for a year. Think about how bad business had been around this time. To give you an idea, in the years from 2000-2001, WCW had a total of 15 PPVs. Two of them drew over 10,000 people and only four broke 8,000. That's total people in the building and there's no telling how many of them actually paid. So let's see: the TV ratings are going down and no one is going to the PPVs or buying them plus the competition is pounding them into the ground while they're losing a million dollars a week.
But none of this killed WCW. Nope, they were FINE until that merger happened.
WCW was dead long before AOL/Time Warner pulled the plug on it. If WCW had been alive and well, why would no other network put it on TV? Because the company was finished. There was a market for wrestling. If not, why would WWF have made over 370 million dollars in 2000? The idea that it was a merger that killed WCW is absurd. It didn't even kill the TV shows. When Ripley's Believe It Or Not is drawing a higher rating than Thunder and is nipping at the heels of Nitro, it's not a merger that ends your show, not when you're bleeding money like that.
AOL/Time Warner didn't get rid of WCW programming because they didn't like wrestling. They got rid of WCW programming because WCW was dead when AOL/Time Warner took control of it. This whole concept can be gotten rid of in one simple question.
According to TVbythenumbers.com, for the week ending June 5, 2011, the top rated cable show was Pawn Stars. Barring something rather strange, is there any reason why the History Channel would stop all airings of this show? It's making money (in theory) and is the top rated show on cable. OF COURSE THEY WOULDN'T CANCEL IT! It would make no sense and the same is true of the theory that the AOL/Time Warner merger killed WCW, because it didn't. It put WCW out of its misery.
I'm here to say that the merger didn't kill WCW. It put WCW out of its misery.
In short, WCW was cancelled because it stopped being a big ratings winner. Back in 1997, WCW was making millions of dollars and was so far ahead of WWF that it wasn't even funny. Bischoff will tell you all the time that he beat WWF for what, 86 or so weeks in a row? In short, they were dominating and making a ton of money.
Then things slowly began to turn around on them, with I believe the blow coming at Starrcade 97, but that's an argument for a later thread. The fans got ticked off after seeing Sting still not be able to win the title as it went to Hogan again in late April. On April 6, Raw won a night in the ratings and for all intents and purposes never looked back. In the roughly 150 battles in the Monday Night Wars after that (3 years, 50 weeks a year for the sake of a round number), WCW won a total of 9 head to head matches, or roughly 6% of the time. They didn't win for approximately two and a half years, or 125 weeks in a row (approximately) by the end of the company.
By the beginning of the year 2000, Vince Russo was running things. WWF had gone through the roof with the reign of Steve Austin and the rise of guys like The Rock and HHH to the main event. They were now a publically traded company and were thrashing WCW in the ratings week in and week out. The Radicals jumped to the WWF in January/February and soon everyone was leaving. David Arquette was made world champion, there was the Hogan/Russo "shoot" thing at Bash at the Beach and everything fell apart. If I remember correctly, at one point over a 52 week period, WCW lost over a million dollars a week on average.
Think about that for a minute. A million dollars is a lot of money. WCW was managing to lose that every 7 days for a year. Think about how bad business had been around this time. To give you an idea, in the years from 2000-2001, WCW had a total of 15 PPVs. Two of them drew over 10,000 people and only four broke 8,000. That's total people in the building and there's no telling how many of them actually paid. So let's see: the TV ratings are going down and no one is going to the PPVs or buying them plus the competition is pounding them into the ground while they're losing a million dollars a week.
But none of this killed WCW. Nope, they were FINE until that merger happened.
WCW was dead long before AOL/Time Warner pulled the plug on it. If WCW had been alive and well, why would no other network put it on TV? Because the company was finished. There was a market for wrestling. If not, why would WWF have made over 370 million dollars in 2000? The idea that it was a merger that killed WCW is absurd. It didn't even kill the TV shows. When Ripley's Believe It Or Not is drawing a higher rating than Thunder and is nipping at the heels of Nitro, it's not a merger that ends your show, not when you're bleeding money like that.
AOL/Time Warner didn't get rid of WCW programming because they didn't like wrestling. They got rid of WCW programming because WCW was dead when AOL/Time Warner took control of it. This whole concept can be gotten rid of in one simple question.
According to TVbythenumbers.com, for the week ending June 5, 2011, the top rated cable show was Pawn Stars. Barring something rather strange, is there any reason why the History Channel would stop all airings of this show? It's making money (in theory) and is the top rated show on cable. OF COURSE THEY WOULDN'T CANCEL IT! It would make no sense and the same is true of the theory that the AOL/Time Warner merger killed WCW, because it didn't. It put WCW out of its misery.