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Post by Head Booker on Jul 30, 2012 11:45:15 GMT -6
Found both these articles from the Observer pretty excellent enough to repost. The first is a pretty in-depth overview of the history of Monday Night Raw. The second examines the wrestling shows Raw still has to surpass in order to be the longest-running ever...spoilered for length... With 1,000 episodes now under its belt, Monday Night Raw may not be the longest running weekly episodic television show in history as it claims, but it can call itself the most noteworthy television wrestling show ever in the United States.
A lot has changed, more than just postage and gas prices, since January 11, 1993. That night, the former two-hour Prime Time Wrestling show on the USA Network, featuring Bobby Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon in studio pitching to arena matches, was replaced by a new concept show. Ratings for Prime Time Wrestling had fallen down to the mid-2s each week. That new show was called Monday Night Raw.
The original Raw was a weekly one hour show that aired live, at least some weeks, from the Manhattan Center, which held 1,100 people at the time, a small building that was a short walk away from Madison Square Garden. The building later became the home of Ring of Honor major shows in the market.
Raw was not the immediate flagship show, although it was given a big promotional push as a new form of wrestling show because it was live. Prior to that time, WWF had rarely done live television shows, although when they did, such as the Royal Rumble from Hamilton, ONT, in 1988, or the MTV specials with Wendi Richter vs. Fabulous Moolah in 1984 and Hulk Hogan vs. Roddy Piper in 1985, they had been spectacular successes. The only regular live wrestling programming on a national basis were PPV shows, and WCW’s Clash of the Champions specials.
But the idea of live weekly programming was hardly revolutionary or innovative. While most pro wrestling shows were taped, Memphis Wrestling, which in many ways can be called the predecessor to Raw where the matches themselves were secondary to the soap opera and character development, aired live in its home market for 90 minutes on Saturday mornings for decades. A few years before Raw, Jim Herd, who was running WCW, tried to push the idea of making the Saturday night show live, thinking it would boost ratings. But he couldn’t push it through both because of the expense, and also because it would lead to having to cancel the Saturday night house shows. Even though WCW was not profitable on the road, most in the business were still in the mindset that it made its money on house shows, which was correct because at the time the WCW company received no money for television rights. Saturday night was the best night to draw. Also, Herd’s experiment of moving the show back an hour, from 7:05 p.m. to 9:05 p.m., with the idea that both hours would be prime time that he came up with ended up as a ratings disappointment, and the show moved back to its long-standing traditional 6:05 p.m. time slot.
In that era, the weekly cable broadcasts of wrestling were the adjunct to the more important shows, which were the syndicated shows. WWE syndicated shows went through various names, with WWE Superstars being the “A” show. That’s where the main angles took place, and that’s where the localized interviews that sold the arena shows were inserted into each market. The idea is the national cable exposure made wrestlers into stars, but it was the syndicated show, in each market, with the wrestlers talking about their upcoming matches and making references to the local market, that sold the matches, and that was were where the money was made.
But within a few years after Raw’s debut, the business of syndicating wrestling shows was dying. Wrestling companies paying local stations to air their programming was believed to have dated back to the 1950s and Jim Barnett. When Sam Muchnick headed the NWA, he frowned on the concept, feeling it was a slippery slope that would lead to long-term trouble for the industry.
In that era, Sunday mornings on independent stations were dominated by religious shows, where the church paid for the time and in exchange used the time to promote donations. The feeling was, if the television industry viewed the wrestling show as an early form of what is now called an infomercial, that they would realize how badly the promoters needed them for their business. In most places, the local wrestling s how did good ratings, and in many places where wrestling was a big part of the local culture or sports scene, it did amazing ratings.
Everyone’s deal was different. In some places, the promoter supplied a tape for free and the station would make money by selling the ad time. In others, the station was also cut in on a percentage of the revenue from the house shows in the city that the show was promoting, which encouraged stations to carry wrestling even if it was hard to get advertisers. Some stations, for whom wrestling was their most popular local show, paid for the production of the show and in some Southern markets, wrestling and the local news were the most profitable programming in the market. In places where that was the case, where the wrestling franchise was valuable locally and multiple stations wanted the show, promoters were able to work out a deal where they were paid a rights fee. But those were the exceptions to the rule, and the money was nothing like television brings today.
What made Raw the most important wrestling television show was a combination of things. The first was actually started by Vince McMahon. In 1983 and 1984, when McMahon expanded his World Wrestling Federation from being the Northeast regional promotion that his father turned into a local institution, to go national, every city of any size had its local form of wrestling. McMahon’s goal was to hire the area’s biggest stars, add them to his roster of Northeastern stars, complete with Andre the Giant, who had been wrestling’s biggest touring attraction for a decade, and then run shows in that area with the stars the fans were used to seeing.
The second part of the plan was to go to the station that broadcasted the local wrestling, and offer money to the station to buy the time slot. McMahon not only would provide a higher caliber of stars and better television production than most (but not all) promotions of that time, but instead of the barter deals, he’d pay the station for the air time. In strong wrestling markets, he was willing to pay upwards of $2,000 per week.
Immediately, the word in television was what Muchnick feared would happen when Barnett did the same thing in the 50s, that wrestling programming should be treated like religious programming, and the promoters were willing to spend money for it.
The prices for air time increased greatly in the 80s, a market like New York was charging $10,000 per week for air time, which is one of the reasons, along with not being able to compete with the star power provided by both McMahon and Jim Crockett Jr., for their deaths. In reality, key reasons for the deaths of not only Mid South Wrestling, but later Jim Crockett Promotions, and in the 90s, Smoky Mountain Wrestling and ECW, and the money losses by WCW (and for that matter WWF when their house show business started falling in the 90s) were the rising costs of securing television because wrestling, no matter the ratings, was having to compete with infomercials to buy open time slots that were up for sale, and ratings became less important than how much someone was willing to pay for the hour.
Inevitably, the territorial system was going to fail because the public was only going to support at a high level either one or two wrestling brands and whoever had the national cable outlet and produced the strongest product was going to make the local promotion look second rate. Jerry Jarrett was able to keep the Memphis territory afloat until 1997, but in the end, even with the combination of him being paid by the local station instead of the other way around, based on wrestling’s long history of ratings in Memphis, and paying talent $25 per night, eventually the lack of paying spectators to the show led to the profits dwindling and eventually becoming red ink. Jarrett and co-owner Jerry Lawler were able to sell the territory for $1 million in cash right before its death, leaving outside investors holding the bag.
Another reason Raw became so popular was the expansion of cable. By the late 90s, more than half the U.S. homes were wired and could get stations like USA, TNT and TBS. And the biggest reason of all was the Monday Night Wars, which led to a boom in interest in pro wrestling.
When Ted Turner went to Eric Bischoff in 1995 and asked him why Vince McMahon’s ratings on Monday night were now ahead of their Saturday night ratings, Bischoff told him it was because Monday was a better night and because Raw was sometimes live. Turner then told him that TNT would clear an hour for him every Monday night and he would go live. The feeling in wrestling at the time is that there were a certain number of wrestling fans, and with the shows going head-to-head, it would divide the audience. Instead of a reasonably well rated Raw, which was doing between a 2.5 and 3.0 rating (remember, it was not the primary show at the time; Superstars, usually syndicated in various time s lots on the weekends was), you’d have two shows splitting the audience and not doing very well and the result would be a perception wrestling programming wasn’t strong. But the opposite happened. Raw was definitely hurt at first by Nitro, but instead of splitting the overall w restling audience, the audience grew. Raw did well with younger viewers, kids and teenagers. Nitro, through using so many of the stars from the 80s on top, brought back an older fan base that was not watching on Monday nights.
Raw’s numbers dropped 15-20% right away, but from the start, the overall audience grew about 60%. It wasn’t long before the overall audience doubled and eventually tripled. Raw didn’t get back to its old numbers until 1998, but at that point, with wrestling so big on Mondays and Raw delivering the better product, the numbers skyrocketed. In 1995, although Raw had been on the air for three years and WWF had a Monday night presence dating back many years before that, to most people, wrestling was something you watched on Saturdays or Sundays, either morning, afternoon, or evening, depending on the city you lived in.
Very quickly, Monday became wrestling night, a tradition that has remained for a generation.
At the peak of the wars in 1998, the differences in the audience were noteworthy. The median age of a Raw viewer ranged between 23 and 25, which means half the viewers were older and half were younger. That was a remarkably low skewing number for a prime time television show. Moreover, as Raw got more risque and popular, they picked up so many young viewers that even when picking up disgruntled Nitro viewers starting in late 1998, and more in 1999, they got as high as 39% of the audience being 17 or under (right now it’s about half that). The ratings for kids and teenagers were among the highest shows, network or otherwise, on television. Nitro’s median audience during the peak period was 32, but as time went on and they lost the younger viewers when Raw became the hot show, it’s remaining viewers skewed older, hovering closer to 40.
Their older audience stuck with it through the bad times while the younger audience either switched to Raw, or many gave up on watching wrestling. That older audience for the most part ceased being fans of wrestling over the last two years of Nitro, and those remaining in 2001 almost all gave up during that year and never came back. The death of WCW immediately cut the over 40 audience watching wrestling down by 35% almost immediately, and that audience never came back.
What is notable is that today, Raw’s median audience ranges weekly from 38 to 40 (although this past week, notable because it was a nostalgia show that s hould have skewed older, it actually skewed younger because of the influx of teenage boys).
The irony is the show is written today to aim younger than the previous boom period, yet the actual audience is significantly older, even than the Nitro audience. Yet, if you go to the live events, kids are more prevalent, meaning that unless you go to a Raw taping or a PPV show, where a lot more people in their 20s and 30s attend, the aim low works to draw smaller crowds and missing out on the largest block of TV viewers. And that isn’t the case for any other sport-like activity.
It was Bischoff, not McMahon, who deserves credit, for making Monday night into wrestling night. Before 1995, there was a wrestling show on Monday night, no different than on Saturdays and Sundays. Very quickly after the debut of Nitro, Monday night became wrestling night, which it still is to this day.
Raw was still a standard wrestling television show, with a few exceptions. They did a few things, like the ring card girl, taken from boxing, in the early years and some comedy segments and skits. At one point Michael Hayes used the name Dok Hendrix and they had a band playing between matches. But it was still stars beating non-stars, usually with a competitive main event.
When Bischoff started Nitro, the philosophy was different. Nitro would be based on stars vs. stars. Dream matches of the era, like Hulk Hogan vs. Sting or Hogan vs. Lex Luger, that would be saved for PPV, were instead made Nitro main events because Bischoff was the newcomer whose goal became winning the ratings war. It became an ego thing. The truth was, WWF had historically rarely worried that much about ratings. It was all about house show attendance, PPV purchases and merchandise sales. Television was just the vehicle to drive those revenue streams. If in a certain market, WWF was drawing lower ratings than another promotion, and that wasn’t unheard of, it didn’t matter because the local promotion was inevitably going to lose ground over time based on losing talent. And bad ratings, which really weren’t the case in most places, often didn’t affect things since they were paying for the time. And even if they got canceled by stations due to ratings, there was always another station in town ready to take the money.
But WCW made Nitro the focal point of the company, and not the house shows or even the PPV shows. Nitro started beating Raw in the ratings, and eventually, WWF had to respond.
There is a laundry list of reasons why Raw ultimately Nitro, when it started the other way around. Nitro was fresher, brought in new talent and new styles. And they mixed old stars with new stars with the strongest roster any promotion in wrestling history ever had. There was something for everyone. Larger-than-life personas, an all-star cast of the best of WWF stars from its early glory days like Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper and Randy Savage, WCW’s stars from years earlier like Sting, Lex Luger and Ric Flair, and a huge key was importing Kevin Nash and Scott Hall from WWF. Underneath, they brought in talent from Japan and Mexico that would tear the house down. WWF was behind the times, with its big guys wrestling a slow style and Vince McMahon’s mindset that older people on top wouldn’t draw.
But in 1997, WWF switched Raw into where the matches didn’t matter, and they had skits, and the landmark U.S. vs. Canada feud, while not initially paying great dividends in ratings, saw house show business pick up. Ironically, what turned WWF’s finances around was a business decision on PPV.
McMahon and a few boxing promoters were the only people to have strong success in PPV in the 80s, when people thought it would change sports. McMahon, like the boxing promoters, felt you had to have a special attraction, or PPV wouldn’t work. WCW got into the PPV game, but was always behind WWF, until 1994, when they signed Hulk Hogan. McMahon felt Hogan, who was about to turn 39 in 1993 when McMahon wanted him to put over Bret Hart at SummerSlam and make a new champion, was past his prime as the focal point of the company. He wanted to keep him around in a similar role that Bruno Sammartino had for his father after Sammartino gave up the title in 1977. He’d be the legend brought back a few times a year and would always be protected in his role. Hogan had moved on to New Japan Pro Wrestling, which was paying him big money for minimal dates, and filming a television show called “Thunder in Paradise.”
While WWE history said Ted Turner’s checkbook took Hogan from WWE to WCW, the reality was different. Hogan gave notice to WWE in the summer of 1993, putting over Yokozuna rather than Hart. He was working major shows in Japan when Eric Bischoff, with help from Ric Flair, talked him into coming to WCW, where he started in the summer of 1994.
WCW gave Hogan the chance to be the old Hogan. While he never came close to the popularity he had during his WWF heyday, Hogan had been the guy on top of all the successful WWF PPV shows, and immediately, Hogan’s drawing power was such that WCW’s PPVs, when Hogan had the right opponent, like Flair, Savage or Vader, would beat WWF’s numbers. WCW expanded its number of PPVs and soon was doing one a month. McMahon did the same thing, but felt threatened he’d ruin his big attraction shows like WrestleMania and SummerSlam, so he did secondary shows called “In Your House,” two hour for $14.95. But when WCW continued to have success at $24.95 going monthly, McMahon followed suit. McMahon’s PPV numbers charging $24.95 increased greatly, both in volume and of course revenue, from when he charged $14.95, and the company started being profitable.
During the heyday of the Monday Night Wars, about 10 million people would watch wrestling on Monday nights. Keep in mind that at that time there were also only 75 million homes wired for cable, as compared to just under 100 million today. There were weeks in when Raw was on fire that more than 11 million people would watch wrestling on Mondays, and wrestling was so strong that it legitimately hurt the ratings of ABC’s Monday Night Football starting with the 1998 season.
As for syndication, because so many people were watching on cable and wrestling was so hot, neither WWF nor WCW needed local syndication, although they did maintain it in many markets. In those days, wrestling would come to town and the demand for tickets got higher and higher. WCW peaked in 1998, although the seeds for the decline, a combination of a complete lack of understanding of what its audience wanted from a wrestling TV show and not making new stars, was already establishing chinks in the foundation. Things would have declined more, as Raw had taken over as the top show due to momentum started with a Steve Austin vs. Mike Tyson angle that saw WrestleMania numbers triple 1997 levels (237,000 buys to 730,000 buys), and led to the landmark Austin vs. McMahon program. But WCW was able to have its best year at the gate and on PPV due to the emergence of Bill Goldberg. After ending Goldberg’s winning streak and doing things like the infamous one-finger touch title change (which would have no negative effect today but was a killer back then), and the miscue of making fun of the taped WWF Raw where Mick Foley won the title, and WCW went down hard in 1999 while WWF had the best year in its history.
Raw ratings declined from their peak when adding a second weekly show, Smackdown. Being on network television, Smackdown actually had more viewers than Raw for a time, although it always drew lower ratings than Raw. While Raw’s ratings peaked in 1999, attendance and popularity continued to expand through 2000. In late 2000, there were signs that the peak was over, and the fall came after WrestleMania in 2001, based on the heel turn of Austin and a number of other factors.
The death of WCW eliminated competition head-to-head, even though WCW had really ceased to be competition in 1999. And the show experienced a slow but steady decline in ratings and PPV, although the emergence of new top headliners like John Cena, Batista and others did lead to attendance at live events increasing from a bottoming out period about seven years ago.
With the exception of Vince McMahon and Executive Producer Kevin Dunn, there have actually been no fixtures through the 19 plus year history of the show. The person who has appeared on the most broadcasts would be Jerry Lawler, who started out doing “The King’s Court,” an interview segment on the earliest episodes of Raw.
It’s been so long that most people remember Lawler as the show’s original announcer. In actuality, on the first 13 weeks, the announcers were Vince McMahon, Randy Savage and a comedian named Rob Bartlett. Bartlett was almost an immediate flop in the role, as his comedy didn’t fit well into a wrestling s how, and on April 26, 1993, he was replaced as the resident comedian by Bobby Heenan. Heenan remained in the position until the end of 1993 when he was dropped by the company, which was losing money, because of his high contract, and went to WCW, where Heenan, Tony Schiavone, Mike Tenay and Larry Zbyszko were the voices of Nitro during its heyday.
Lawler started as a heel interviewer, who was often involved in angles, his biggest being with Bret Hart, one of the top babyfaces of that period. The feud stemmed from Hart winning the King of the Ring PPV in 1993, while Lawler had long been known as the King of Wrestling dating back to Bobby Shane letting him have his gimmick when Shane left the U.S. for Australia in the 70s.
But Lawler has been with the show for most of its 19 years. He was gone for about one year when he was facing sexual charges with a minor in Louisville. WWF fired him when the charges went public, in 1993. The charges were dropped when the girl recanted her story, and Lawler plea bargained down to a minor witness tampering misdemeanor offense. At that point Lawler was brought back to WWF.
Lawler started as an announcer on April 10, 1995, working with McMahon. Randy Savage was actually the first wrestler who was a color commentator on the show, starting in week one and lasting until the Halloween show of 1994, at which point he left to go to WCW. Shawn Michaels and Jim Cornette were in the roles before Lawler, who has been a fixture in that chair with the exception of a few months in 1998 and 1999 when the announcing chair revolved, and a nine month period in 2001 when he quit the company over a decision to fire his wife, Stacy Carter, who had been a female performer. Lawler left out of loyalty, and was replaced by Paul Heyman. Several attempts were made to bring Lawler back, but they all fell through because he insisted on his wife also being hired back. What led to Lawler’s return were two things. The first was Lawler had signed a contract with the XWF, a new promotion that the WWF was intent on raiding. The second was Carter left Lawler, so there was no hold up of insisting his wife gets her job back to keep him from finalizing his deal.
Lawler’s best remembered partner was Jim Ross. Ross had been the voice of Mid South Wrestling during its heyday, and had personally negotiated the sale of the com pany to Crockett. He was working with WCW, and a decision was made to take him off the air as the lead announcer, largely a political move because of his affiliation with Bill Watts’ failed regime in charge of the company. Ross found a contract loophole and jumped to WWF amid big fanfare, but his love/hate relationship with McMahon started early. Ross was fired after contracting Bell’s Palsy with the feeling someone who looked like him couldn’t be on television. WCW had no interest in taking him back and his career in wrestling seemed over, as he was limited to being the voice of Smoky Mountain Wrestling, which was more of a favor to Jim Cornette than a job he could make any real money at.
Then, out of the blue, he wound up talking his way back in, working with McMahon as a booker, eventually becoming head of talent relations and being put back on the air.
The unique McMahon/Ross relationship can be seen based on the history of Raw announcers. After being fired the first time, McMahon brought Ross back in the summer of 1994, since McMahon was involved in a federal trial on steroid distribution charges (the distribution charges were dropped due to a venue issue and a weak case; McMahon was acquitted of charges that he was in a conspiracy with Pennsylvania doctor George Zahorian to distribute steroids to his wrestlers). After McMahon was acquitted, Ross was fired from the company a second time.
Ross became a regular host on August 5, 1996, working with Lawler and McMahon. McMahon left the booth after the 1997 Survivor Series for a number of reasons, because he had become so unpopular in the wake of screwing Bret Hart that it wouldn’t be wise for him to be the lead announcer. This led to transforming into the strongest heel in company history in the feud with Austin. Shortly after the Survivor Series in 1997, the three-man team was Ross, Michael Cole and current ROH announcer Kevin Kelly. Ross suffered another bout with Bell’s Palsy in late 1998 but returned after WrestleMania in 1999.
Ross was replaced in 2005 on the move from Spike back to USA. WWE has secretly negotiated a deal with Mike Goldberg, who was the voice of the UFC. On the week that Raw moved from Spike back to USA, Spike countered with a live UFC special. McMahon made a lucrative offer to Goldberg, which would have made him the highest paid announcer WWE ever had, plus a bonus if he would have no-showed the UFC live event and appeared on Raw that night with no warning. UFC was nowhere near the level of company it would be a year later. However, Goldberg, who was really not a wrestling fan although he did watch the Hulk Hogan AWA era wrestling when living in Minneapolis, got a sizeable raise from UFC to stay. He thought going to WWE could hurt his career in broadcasting real sports, went back-and-forth during the week but eventually changed his mind on the offer. The funny part of the deal is that Goldberg had hoped he would be able to use a stage name as a WWE announcer, thinking it would hurt him long-term when it came to being a sports announcer. McMahon, not knowing any of this, also wanted Goldberg to use a stage name, because at the time, McMahon was still bitter about Bill Goldberg. Goldberg’s pulling out led to Ross getting a few more weeks before he was replaced by current ESPN anchor Jonathan Coachman. Ross also suffered serious health issues during that period. Coachman was later phased out in favor of former ECW announcer Joey Styles, and after Ross was brought back for the 2006 WrestleMania, a month later he replaced Styles in his final run as lead announcer. He was moved to Smackdown in the 2008 draft. Aside from a few month run in 2011 as part of a storyline to get HHH over as a babyface and then being fired to get John Laurinaitis over as a heel, he’s done spot duty on rare occasions, usually for a match or two, like this past week, on nostalgia based shows.
Raw started as a one hour show. Since leaving Allentown and Hamburg with the national expansion, WWF had been taping its television in major arenas. They would tape a few shows on one night, with the first hour airing live and the remaining hours airing in successive weeks. They taped in cycles, where they would do several week long storylines starting with the live show and building to climax on the final show of the taping. Because of climaxing the storylines on the show the week before the next live taping, it was the taped shows that usually drew the highest ratings.
The impression was always given that the show was live, even though much of the time that wasn’t the case. Where the show differed from the syndicated shows was there was more comedy involved, and the syndicated format was squash matches. Raw had squash matches at first, but most shows also had a main event, and built storylines week-to-week for television, which had been done in syndication, but not as frequently.
Ratings immediately increased from what Prime Time Wrestling was doing. During the pre-Nitro period would range from the high 2s to the mid-3s. But in its early years, seeing Raw live was not a hot ticket. It didn’t take long before, even with papering, they couldn’t come close to filling the Manhattan Center for tapings, and started at first going on the road to small Northeast arenas, looking for places that had capacities of 3,000 or so. That’s why, even to this day, the city that has hosted the second most episodes of Raw is Poughkeepsie, NY, a city Raw outgrew 14 years ago.
The greatest thing, in hindsight, that happened to the show was the Monday Night Wars. WCW debuted Nitro in September, 1995, and one-hour versions of each show went head-to-head, with the ratings lead going back-and-forth. Nitro went live every week. During the first several months, the ratings went back-and-forth. Raw had the edge, in the sense that Nitro had to deliver significantly stronger main events with bigger names to win the week.
In 1996, the ante was upped. Nitro went to two hours, and with the NWO angle, beat Raw every week, and by 1997, usually by a large margin. Raw went to two hours in February, 1997, and creatively started taking off a few months later. Many will remember 1997 as the year Raw really broke out, with the Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart feud where Austin was the babyface in the U.S. and Hart was the babyface in Canada. It lost the ratings every week, usually by a wide margin. With WWF losing millions, McMahon made the move to get rid of Hart, his highest paid wrestler (McMahon had signed Hart to an unheard of 20-year contract in 1996 to keep Hart from signing a three-year deal at $2.8 million per year with WCW–the type of money only Hulk Hogan made in those days. But the company was losing money and McMahon attempted to get Hart to agree to defer his contract payments, and when Hart turned that down, McMahon gave him the option to leave and see if WCW was still interested in giving him the deal. That led to the 1997 Survivor Series, and the birth of the heel Mr. McMahon character.
The relationship lasted five years, during which ratings fell significantly. While WCW had its best year ever in 1998, the WWF business turned around that year. There were a num ber of reasons, the biggest being the ascension of Austin. Austin really started showing signs of being a major drawing card in late 1997, as there was a late year rise in business after he returned from a major neck injury which threatened to end his career, and eventually did shorten his career. But the interplay with McMahon and the rise of The Rock and DX led to the golden era of the promotion, which lasted through WrestleMania of 2001, and ended when Austin was turned heel.
In 1998, Raw was still only going live every other week. When business was booming in September 1999, they made the call to be a live weekly show, a status that has remained unchanged. A year later, the show became a major money generator, as a contract signed with TNN, The National Network (which is now Spike TV), increased the annual rights fee for Raw from $5.5 million that USA was paying to $28 million, plus WWF also controlled a percentage of the ad revenue for the show. Raw, the highest rated show on cable television, was by itself strong enough to make TNN from an also-ran network with an 0.7 prime time ratings average into a borderline top ten network.
The relationship lasted five years, a period where ratings fell consistently. A combination of the frustration of blaming being on a weaker network and Bonnie Hammer getting control of USA Network and wanting wrestling back led to the 2005 move back. As it turned out, it was the show, not the network, since ratings continued to fall with the move back. Plus, when Spike saw the handwriting on the wall in 2005, they announced they were canceling Raw, something of a face saving move. But with no leverage, WWF got a worse deal from USA to move than they were getting from Spike, getting the same $28 million per year licensing fee, but WWF with its new deal no longer shared in the ad revenue.
Still, Raw is a solid consistent performer. While it is no longer the highest rated show on cable, it still runs first run episodes 52 weeks a year, something no other highly rated show does. The scripted high rated dramas and reality shows on cable run short seasons. Sports are also seasonal.
The company got a lot of publicity this week over hitting the 1,000-episode m ilestone. Always comparing itself to scripted prime time shows, whether they be “Gunsmoke” or “The Simpsons” or other shows that remained ratings hits for decades, the reality is that sports programming, unlike scripted shows, can last forever. The NFL and MLB have been consistently on national television since the 50s and nobody really calls any attention to milestones. Similarly, pro wrestling has been successful on U.S. television since Gorgeous George popularized the medium in the late 1940s. Running 19 ½ years, Raw would be among the longer lasting wrestling shows in history, but far from the longest.
The problem with saying that, is where Raw really stands is more based on how you choose to categorize things.
Almost every city of any size has consistently had pro wrestling on television since the advent of independent stations in the late 50s or early 60s, until the deaths of the territories, mostly in the late 80s. In many cases, the promotions and stations changed. However, Raw also changed stations during its run, but kept its name and never went off the air.
Verne Gagne’s AWA All-Star Wrestling show started with him as promoter in 1960, and lasted 30 years until the promotion closed, in the home Minneapolis market. Similarly, Championship Wrestling from Florida was in every major city in the state from 1961 until the promotion closed in 1987.
One of the most popular and highly-rated wrestling shows was the St. Louis based Wrestling at the Chase, w hich debuted on May 23, 1959. The show got its name because it was originally taped at the ritzy Chase Hotel, with the shows in the early years featuring performers like Dick the Bruiser and Gene Kiniski brawling at the Khorrasan Room, while an older upper class skewing audience, men in suits and ties, and women in evening gowns, hosted by Joe Garagiola, looked more like a crowd at an opera than a sporting event.
The St. Louis Wrestling Club was owned about 51% by Sam Muchnick, until January 1, 1982, when he retired and sold his interest to Bob Geigel, Harley Race, Pat O’Connor and Verne Gagne, who within two years drove ratings so far down the station had decided not to cancel the show, but have a new promotion in the time slot.
The choice came down to local promoter Larry Matysik, known locally as the voice of wrestling and Muchnick’s longtime assistant, who had quit the promotion in early 1983 and started running on his own, and Vince McMahon, who at the time had not yet let the world know he was planning on going national. McMahon was running in the Northeast, but had also started running shows in Los Angeles and San Jose, markets that opened up when Mike LeBell shut down his promotion.
The name was such an institution locally that when McMahon struck a deal to get the time slot, by offering KPLR-TV, $2,100 per week (previously KPLR had paid for production of the local show in exchange for a percentage of house show revenue, and the WWF deal included 5% of all local house shows), he called the WWF syndicated show, “Wrestling at the Chase” instead of “Superstars,” in the market, at least through the end of 1986, if not longer. Wrestling remained on the station until the early 90s, when they finally canceled WWF wrestling due to poor ratings. So did the show last 24 ½ years, 26 ½ years, or 34 years? During that period, the show had several time slot changes, but may have been the longest running show on the same station in pro wrestling history.
Similarly, 25-year-old Lance Russell began announcing pro wrestling in Memphis in 1951 on local television. He remained a fixture on the air in that city for nearly 40 years, until signing w ith WCW in early 1989. And after his WCW deal expired in 1992, he returned to host Memphis Wrestling until a falling out with the promotion in 1997. During that period, the show bounced around different stations. It was on Ch. 13 in Memphis as far back as anyone could remember. In 1977, when Jerry Jarrett opened up opposition to Nick Gulas, he brought Russell with him and they moved wrestling to Ch. 5, where the studio wrestling show remained until Jarrett sold the promotion, and eventually went out of business. So, as far as Championship Wrestling, the name of the television show was concerned, is that 46 years or just the 20-year Jarrett run and the 26-year Nick Gulas promotion run? In this case, I’d argue the latter because they were two different promotions.
Vince McMahon Sr. was taping regular wrestling shows from the mid-50s until he sold the promotion to his son in 1982. There were various wrestling television shows on in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1975, although with different names, different time slots and on different stations.
Generally, the three shows that are talked about as the longest running wrestling shows in history, whether this is accurate or not, would be Houston Wrestling, Portland Wrestling and Georgia/World Championship Wrestling/WCW Saturday Night.
Raw may be able to claim to be the longest running national weekly episodic television show in U.S. history if it wasn’t for wrestling on TBS.
Beginning under the name Georgia Championship Wrestling, later being renamed World Championship Wrestling and then WCW Saturday Night, the Saturday 6-8 p.m. Eastern time block on TBS is listed as one of the longest running national television shows in U.S. history. But there are two questions regarding how long this would be.
For one, what was the starting point? WTCG, Ch. 17 in Atlanta, owned by Ted Turner, became the first national SuperStation in January 1976. Georgia Championship Wrestling was the first, hit on the station, and its highest rated show for the next several years as more and more cable companies picked the channel up. At its peak, in 1981, the show averaged a 6.4 rating on Saturday and a 6.6 on Sunday (ironically Saturday was the first-run show and Sunday was highlights of usually the previous week plus tapes of wrestlers headed to Georgia from other territories), and for years was the highest rated show on cable television.
The channel later changed its call letters to WTBS, and later was just known as the TBS SuperStation.
I couldn’t even tell you when Georgia Championship Wrestling started. It was on WQXI-TV in Atlanta for years, likely from the late 50s or early 60s under promoter Paul Jones. Ray Gunkel, who was running the promotion, struck a deal in late 1971 to move the show to Turner’s WTCG, where it debuted on December 25, 1971. The show remained on the channel until June 24, 2000, through several ownership changes, when it ran its final Saturday night broadcast.
The promotion changed its name first in 1972 after Gunkel died, when the other partners on ABC Promotions tried to shut his widow out of the company which led to a major wrestling war. Without missing a beat, the new company was named Georgia Championship Wrestling, Inc.
What was notable about that show is in November, 1972, almost the entire roster of Georgia Championship Wrestling, with the exception of Bob Armstrong and Darrell Cochrane, quit the promotion. In a major story on Thanksgiving morning, just hours before GCW’s biggest show of the year, it was announced almost the entire roster was going with Ann Gunkel, Ray’s widow, for her new promotion, All South Wrestling.
A consortium of NWA promoters moved in, spearheaded by Eddie Graham, and sent talent that night into Atlanta so they could run a show. They put Bill Watts in charge of booking and rebuilt the promotion with Florida stars like Jack Brisco, Buddy Colt as well as the return of Tim “Mr. Wrestling” Woods, who was the area’s most popular wrestler a few years earlier when he quit over feeling cheated on a payoff when he larger than usual house for his challenge to NWA champion Gene Kiniski. As it turned out, the biggest enduring star was journeyman wrestler John Walker, in his early 40s and looking older, whose career appeared to be almost finished. He donned the mask and became Mr. Wrestling II, and had a second career, far more successful than his first.
What was unique about the war from late 1972 into 1974, is that GCW had its television deal with Turner’s station. But Ann Gunkel, who had a close relationship with Turner, was also able to get her show on the station.
The Atlanta promotional war was among the most bitter and dirtiest in history. But every Saturday morning, almost like the practice sessions between rival teams on The Ultimate Fighter, one group of wrestlers would finish their s how, clean up and the other promotion would come in the doors ready to film their show. Not only that, but the two shows aired one after the other, from 6-8 p.m. When Gunkel’s promotion folded in 1974, both hours went to Georgia Championship Wrestling and were produced as two different shows. That explains why, for years, Gordon Solie would sign off at 7:04 p.m., the show would end, the opening theme music would play again, and Solie would welcome people to a show that had already been on for an hour.
And frequently, wrestlers who worked the first hour would wrestle on the s econd hour, as they were treated as if they were completely different shows.
Jim Barnett was brought in to run the company in 1973 partially because he knew and was willing to do any dirty tactic known to mankind to destroy Gunkel. Barnett ran the company until he was forced out by Ole Anderson in 1982.
In 1984, the majority of stockholders, behind Anderson’s back, in one of wrestling’s best-kept secrets, sold the company to Vince McMahon. After a court case where they ruled that McMahon had legally purchased the com pany, Georgia Championship Wrestling folded. The TV show, which had already had a name change to World Championship Wrestling, continued in a new format, which was WWF tapes being sent in. A year later, when Turner was going to cancel the show due to declining ratings and being upset McMahon wasn’t taping the show in Atlanta at his studios, McMahon sold the time slot to Jim Crockett for $1 million. Crockett ran from 1985 to 1988 on the station, and then, deeply in debt, sold the com pany to Turner Broadcasting. But the show ran in the Saturday night time slot on the station for 28 ½ years, of which 24 ½ of those years it was a national show.
Going weekly for 28 ½ years would be about 1,480 episodes on the same station. On a national basis, the show did about 1,275 episodes.
Raw will not be what it always claims to be, the longest running weekly episodic national television show in history until November 2017. But if you take the term literally, since they never use the term national, it will not even be the longest running pro wrestling show on television until 2032 at the earliest.
But Raw’s 1,000 number includes five years on TNN, so if you include the WQXI years, since the show was called Georgia Championship Wrestling, it’s closer to 40 years and more than 2,000 episodes. The show died several months before WCW shut down, since they already had Thunder on Thursdays on TBS to go along with Nitro, the Saturday night show had, from 1995 on with the rise of Nitro, become an afterthought. Ratings dwindled, falling as low as a 1.3, since the big names almost never appeared on the show, and there was really no reason to continue it.
Promoter Don Owen debuted on television in Portland, OR, on July 10, 1953, with a show called Heidelberg Wrestling, on KPTV, named after its sponsor, the Heidelberg Brewing Com pany. In 1955, the same show switched stations to KOIN, and changed its name to Portland Wrestling. It returned to KPTV in 1967, using the name Portland Wrestling, until being canceled at the end of 1991, when WWF struck a deal with the station. Like in St. Louis, instead of paying for production of a weekly show, KPTV was able to get a tape of wrestling sent in, and get paid for the time. Don Owen’s leading sponsor, a local furniture and appliance dealer, declaring bankruptcy also led to the show’s demise at that time, but the truth is, even if Tom Peterson hadn’t had financial issues, the economics of wrestling for a local television station and do run a regional promotion had changed. It was only a question of when, as the show’s death at that time was an inevitability.
But it ran 38 ½ years uninterrupted on Saturday nights, roughly 2,000 episodes. For much of that period, the show ran live matches in prime time from the 3,000-seat converted bowling alley that Owen owned and renamed the Portland Sports Arena. In the late 70s, the show moved to 11:30 p.m., airing on a few hour tape delay.
The longest running pro wrestling show in U.S. history when it comes to a show for the entire time being run by the same promotion was likely Houston Wrestling, promoted by the Gulf Athletic Club. The show went on the air just as television was starting in the city in 1948, under the name Texas Rasslin. In its first ten or so years, the show not only ran on the station, but was syndicated all over the country. Texas became known for a bloody brawling style of wrestling, which also featured a heavy dose of Lucha Libre, since Hispanic stars like Rito Romero (who popularized the upside down surfboard, known as the Rito Romero special), Blackie Guzman, Pepper Gomez and later Jose Lothario were the show’s flagship stars. It was never as national as the Chicago or Los Angeles wrestling shows in the early 50s that were on network stations, but it was in a lot of markets at least through the late 50s.
Houston Wrestling started on KLEE (later KPRC), before switching to KHTV in 1967. The show remained on the air through the summer of 1987, a 39-year-run. Paul Boesch, who hosted the show through its entire run, had a “39 on 39" slogan during the last year. Boesch, who had been a wrestling star in the 30s and 40s, suffered injuries that cut down his wrestling and he became a booker and television announcer, and top assistant to promoter Morris Sigel. He took over as promoter in 1966.
Houston Wrestling for most of its run would air 90 minutes of action on Saturday nights from the Friday night house show each week at the Sam Houston Coliseum. In the 80s, when Boesch sold a percentage of the office to Bill Watts and became affiliated with Mid South Wrestling, the TV consisted of the 60 minute Mid South show with localized promos Boesch would do at the arenas and one or two matches from the local house shows to fill the other half hour. The block became two hours in 1985.
The death of that show came over a series of situations. In 1987, with business in Houston being at its weakest point in anyone’s memory, tensions between Watts and Boesch had heightened. Watts sold his promotion to Jim Crockett Jr., and Boesch was not even informed of it until the deal was finalized. Miffed that Crockett Jr. didn’t call him personally, which he should have, Boesch instead made a deal to affiliate with Vince McMahon. But once he made the deal, it went downhill fast. The two men had entirely different philosophies on what pro wrestling was, made worse by the fact there were so many no-shows on the WWF shows in Houston. Boesch came from the school where you don’t false advertise and there was nothing worse than no-shows. He wanted out, and announced his retirement and promoted his final show in August 1987. Ironically, the very weekend of his retirement, he spoke to the station about eventually trying to get something going. It wasn’t long after his retirement that Boesch struck a deal with Crockett, but he refused to allow himself to be called the promoter in Houston because if would have broken his word about retiring. He passed away in 1989 at the age of 76. ~~ In what could be an indication that his main roster debut is imminent, Dean Ambrose has been added to the WWE Souvenir Program that is given out exclusively at live events. WWE only create new programs twice a year so to add somebody not already on the roster would strongly suggest that he will be up very soon. Creative had been discussing ways to debut him for quite some time and it is expected that he will receive a big storyline on Raw once he is formally called up. Ambrose has been working dark matches before most of the television tapings since WrestleMania. |
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