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Originally Posted by whiteyford
I'm pretty certain, given that TNT owned WCW at that point and the channel it was shown on, if it was financially viable to show PPVs they would have but it was 5 hours every week as it was, and while not exactly free to air it was available to even the basic satellite customer, unlike the WWF at the time.
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The way the sky satellite tv packages were at that time you had to purchase the basic package anyway for the set top box to be viable which gave you at least sky one and hence some wwe programming alongside obviously TNT. Given that the popularity shown by the house show attendances in 2000 and I'm guessing those were not just casual fans, it shows there may well have been an appetite for ppv broadcasts even in a recorded format. I mean TNT was just cruddy classic movies and reruns of lame shows from the 80s and was on the same broadcast signal as the Cartoon Network. I'm sure on a Sunday night they could have accommodated a live broadcast of Bash at the Beach or Starrcade. We will never know.
The fact is WCW could have done so much more to expand their global fan base or indeed consolidate that which they already had but they were so obsessed with the Monday night wars and putting a decent episode of nitro that they never saw the bigger picture. I mean think of how much money they could have made had Goldberg fought hogan for the WCW title on ppv rather than nitro?
I mean WCW worldwide began broadcasting free to air on channel five as I recall again around the year 2000 but as I keep stating WCW were pretty much finished circa February 1999.
I feel as a WCW fan I lost out never getting to watch broadcasts of bash at the beach, Starrcade, fall brawl war games etc seeing clips on nitro or reading about in WCW magazine which I had to pay ott subscription fees for just didn't do it justice.