The Wrestling Observer Yearbook '97: The Last Time WWF Was Number Two

by Dave Meltzer

  As mentioned here many times, in the past when Raw was taped three out of every four weeks, there was no significant difference in the ratings of the live show as compared with that of the taped shows. Theoretically, because word travels faster in wrestling now than ever before, there will be more people than ever before aware of much of what will occur on the taped shows before they happen, but there is no evidence that anywhere close to enough people know or if they do it makes enough of a difference to have any kind of a measurable effect on the ratings.

  The WWF’s decision to drop the two-hour In Your House concept of a reduced price PPV comes on the heels of WCW successfully running monthly nearly three hour long PPV shows this year at $27.95 and not showing any effects of the price tag cutting down on buys. Both groups for average shows seem to hover between a 0.5 and 0.65 buy rate, but WCW this year is substantially ahead in PPV revenue because of charging the higher price on every show. Now it will be back to WWF charging the higher price, as it had been up until the past year.

  To keep WrestleMania in its position as a special event, that show will be priced at $34.95. The 1995 WrestleMania, which was something of a major disappointment, was priced at $34.95 and there were many who blamed the price tag as the reason the show didn’t come close to early projections. Obviously the WWF believed it as well as it cut the Mania price back to $29.95 the past two years. However, there is every economic indication this year that the wrestling audience is far more willing to spend more money to see what they perceive as a premium event, and all forms of entertainment are charging more for tickets than a few years ago.

  In a sense, this would remove the “specialness” of the other four of the formerly big five shows of the year (Rumble, King of the Ring, SummerSlam and Survivors) since all the shows would have to be marketed more as equals to the other monthly events, however WCW has been running this year under similar circumstances while passing WWF as the industry PPV leader. While the future of UFC-type events for 1998 doesn’t look positive, one would expect added competition from at least three ECW events on PPV and several WCW-sponsored Lucha Libre events.

  In fact, within wrestling there is now the theory that up to a certain point, not only is price inelastic in wrestling but that higher ticket prices may actually encourage buys. Zane Bresloff, who promotes most of the house shows for WCW, which has recently increased its prices across the board to a significant degree and at the same time has shown a significant increase in attendance while doing so (June was the single biggest month for arena attendance in the history of the company) has noted that particularly in the major markets, selling tickets at $35 is easy and they are generally snatched up the first day. But it’s very difficult to sell tickets at $10 or $12. He believes there is a psychological deal where people will take dates or go out with buddies for high priced tickets but won’t do so when tickets are cheap because somehow they see that as a sign of seeing a minor league level entertainment product or being part of the peanut gallery.

  A similar but opposite situation that gives the same message in wrestling took place in 1992 when Kip Frey was in charge of WCW. To make himself fan-friendly, one of his first moves was to decrease prices at the arena shows. The end result of that was an actual decrease in live attendance, not an increase. It must be noted that pro wrestling when it comes to drawing mainstream fans is in competition with other sports and entertainment events, and for all the talk that $35 is too much for a family of four to buy tickets, the fact is the tickets are still far cheaper than events like pro football, the NHL, the NBA and other major league sports events that routinely sellout their shows in most markets.

  3 – The Origins of WCW Thunder

  FEBRUARY 24

  Just a few days before the World Wrestling Federation began its own generally weekly live prime time wrestling show, World Championship Wrestling has upped the ante again.

  TBS, Ted Turner’s original cable superstation that basically got off the ground nearly two decades ago through Atlanta Braves baseball and Georgia Championship Wrestling, has decided its future is to go back to its past. TBS will begin its own live two-hour prime time wrestling show at some time in the not too distant future, perhaps as early as the May sweeps. Although it has been heavily rumored within the industry about it being a Thursday night show, and the odds are probably better than it will be on Thursday than any other night, the decisions as to what night and when it will start will probably not be made for another few weeks.

  The idea of doing the show had just come up in the past week or two, and was finalized by Eric Bischoff in a meeting with TBS on 2/14. The show would largely be funded by TBS with a weekly financial package that would make it basically impossible for WCW to be a money-losing proposition at any time in the near future. It is expected that WCW will now try to add talent, rather than subtract, in order to fill up four live hours plus five other taped hours between national major cable and syndication every week.

  The show will either air on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday on TBS. Obviously Monday is out the window, Sunday would conflict with the PPV shows, and Saturday already has its traditional show. Thursday is the most likely date because the other nights would have too many baseball preemptions during the summer.

  Of course this brings up the obvious question of what point does over-saturation hit. It was largely believed in September of 1995 when Bischoff and Turner came up with what became Nitro, a prime time show to go head-to-head with Vince McMahon’s successful Monday Night Raw, that the competition would drive down both live attendance and PPV buy rates for both companies, plus divide up a finite group of wrestling fans so both show’s ratings would be unimpressive. As history has shown, that turned out not to be the case. If anything, the addition of Nitro revitalized a wrestling industry that had been largely at a lull since a combination of scandals, weak booking and an inability to create new stars had taken it down several levels in 1992.

  The competition changed the entire face of pro wrestling booking. Long-term ideas for the most part were dropped based on constant changes made both to fool a public with more access to information and to win on Mondays. By loading up on established names from the past, creating new stars, particularly high fliers who were generally thought to only have a career internationally, and booking PPV quality matches on a weekly basis, Nitro held its own with Raw from the start. The combination of expanding to two hours and the introduction of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, both of which happened simultaneously in late May, led to WCW dominating the ratings each and every Monday.

  If anything, this expansion only picked up live attendance even more. Both companies ran house shows far more successfully and profitably in 1996 than either had in several years—both increasing attendance for the year nearly 60% As mentioned a few weeks back, ironically WWF actually increased on a per show basis at a slightly greater margin than WCW.

  On PPV, WWF’s buy rates and revenue decreased slightly in 1996 as compared with 1995, even with increasing the In Your House price tag from $14.95 to $19.95 and making the five big PPV events all at $29.95. In 1995, WWF ran ten PPV shows averaging an estimated $1.80 million per event, while in 1996 they ran 12 events averaging an estimated $1.66 million and buy rates did decline an estimated 11% (an estimated 0.75 to 0.67).

  WCW slightly increased its buy rates (0.63 to 0.64) while increasing from nine PPV events to ten in 1996 and increasing the per-event revenue from an estimated $1.72 million per event to an estimated $1.80 million.

  So, while overall buy rates have declined slightly over the past year and per-event revenue has stayed about the same, the addition of Nitro hasn’t had any significant negative effect at least at this point on that end of the business.

  So after more than 30 consecutive Monday night defeats, WWF upped the ante starting on 2/17 with its own version of a live weekly show. WCW responded by adding its own prime time show which would go unopposed when it comes to wrestling competition, although if it goes on Thursday nights a
gainst the NBC blockbuster line-up, it is hardly without entertainment competition.

  However, those same points were brought up when Bischoff started Nitro on Mondays thinking about how the combination of the NFL in the fall and WWF every week would leave that show in ratings dust. And all the points about overexposure were brought up and to this point haven’t come to fruition. However, there is a saturation point in every entertainment industry. And we’re quickly heading, in this industry, to the real-life night the line was crossed.

  APRIL 21

  There is absolutely no talk about doing that live Thursday night show on TBS nor are any arenas booked for live Thursday tapings as they’d have to be months in advance for planning a start. TBS offered big money for the show, but apparently common sense may win out after all since it’ll destroy the personal lives of most of the office and a lot of the wrestlers, not to mention possibly dilute the winning Monday night formula.

  MAY 26

  The latest on the Thursday live TBS prime time show are that Bischoff doesn’t want to do the show unless TBS can guarantee them a time slot where they won’t be preempted by other sports events, and at this point with all the baseball coverage every summer, there was no night TBS could make that guarantee.

  AUGUST 25

  World Championship Wrestling is expected to officially announce shortly the addition of a second two-hour weekly live television show starting at 8 p.m. on Thursday nights with the kick-off date planned for January on TBS.

  The show had been in the talking stages for months. At one point it appeared to have been a definite, as TBS, in its own ratings war with USA, Nickelodeon and sister station TNT for the top spot in cable, wanted the kind of weekly boost TNT has gotten from its wrestling show. With the money figure offered by TBS for the show, believed to be about $12 million for the year, substantial enough to insure the company as being easily and majorly profitable despite its huge talent costs (which likely will be increasing), at first it appeared to be an easy decision.

  However, many in WCW feared the new show in a big way, both from a personal standpoint because of the increase in work load, and the fear of television overexposure prematurely ending the current boom period and talent morale problems from adding 52 more dates per year on the road. Nevertheless, when WCW drew a strong 3.8 rating off its traditional Monday night on 7/22, and followed it up with the 4.34 on 8/4, the betting line was that the company would be dragged by the network, kicking and screaming if it had to, into adding the second show.

  A memo was sent internally to WCW officials on 8/13 about the second show, although Eric Bischoff was telling people, perhaps in an attempt to come off as the good guy in a situation that wouldn’t be taken well, that he was going to resist doing the show unless it was specifically ordered by Ted Turner. However, high-level internal meetings were scheduled in how to put together the new show on 8/19 in Atlanta.

  TBS may change its weekend four hours of taped wrestling programming schedule although no change will be made in the Saturday night show. The belief, stemming from statements Bischoff made on Nitro and other bits and pieces we’ve picked up is that one of the two weekly shows would become more NWO-oriented with Bischoff as the host, and the other more WCW-oriented and that they’d try to portray the two groups even more as two entirely different promotions that are feuding and have the PPV and arena shows become more inter-promotional in focus.

  Of course this brings up the obvious overexposure question. Thus far in expansions, from WCW expanding Nitro to two hours, followed by WWF expanding Raw to two hours, it has only resulted in more fans watching wrestling on cable than in many years. There is an over-saturation point as wrestling history has shown, both in the 50s and again in the late 80s and early 90s where television has fueled a boom period and then within a few years gobbled it up and left the scraps struggling for financial survival. Even with all the new programming, there is still far less wrestling available on television in most markets than in the mid-80s when so many regional promotions had syndication before they went under one-by-one. As has been historically the case with wrestling every boom period, more television is added until it chokes itself through decreased ratings.

  But at the same time, right now there is no evidence whatsoever based on falling ratings—if anything the opposite looks to be the case—that pro wrestling as it stands right now is overexposed. The ability to add another live show without a creative drain on those writing the shows (not to mention the problems because of the top guys re-writing their own storylines) not to mention the physical drain and increased injury rate from the wrestlers who will have to carry the bulk of the time through their ring work is just another item to consider.

  SEPTEMBER 1

  Meetings were held this week regarding the new TBS Thursday night live show. If you hear any rumors about what it’ll be, they are just rumors because literally nothing has been decided. The only things made clear is that the show has to be as good as Nitro because TBS with all the money they are paying for the show won’t settle for a second-rate Nitro.

  There were talks about adding stars from the past or about using the Thursday show to focus on the Guerrero, Malenko, Benoit types and give them more time to have better matches, or even using ex-UFC fighters to give it more of a shooting aura. Based on things at the meeting and what Bischoff is saying on television, it seems his idea is to make Nitro a two-hour NWO show and the new unnamed show a WCW show and make it seem more like a promotional war between the two. For reasons alluded to earlier, it’s a risky proposition on Mondays.

  SEPTEMBER 8

  The first episode of the new Thursday show will be on 1/7 from Daytona Beach. While nothing is certain, it appears that one of the two shows, likely Nitro, will be the NWO show. The Thursday show will probably be the WCW show and focus on history and tradition with features showing things through the years like they did with the open of Nitro on Anderson.

  NOVEMBER 24

  The current plan still seems to be that starting in January, the Monday show will become NWO Nitro, perhaps built around a feud with Hogan’s NWO with he and Savage, against the Wolfpack, with the members splitting up and taking sides. Some talk that Bischoff and Rick Rude would do the announcing for this show, which after the job Rude did in ECW, would be good for about one week at the most. Thursday would be WCW Thunder, built around Flair, Sting, Giant, Luger and Bret Hart and they’d feud amongst themselves. What would then make the PPV shows special is that all the big stars would be on the PPV and you’d have theoretical inter-promotional battles there. This could and probably will change 100 times between now and January, which is actually coming up shockingly quickly.

  DECEMBER 8

  The announcement of the Eric Bischoff vs. Larry Zbyszko match for Starrcade ‘97 in Washington, DC with Nitro at stake appears to be the beginning of Bischoff’s biggest gamble to date—messing with the winning Monday night formula.

  As mentioned previously, the working idea for 1998 is to split WCW and NWO into somewhat separate entities, each having their own television show and often running separate house shows. The groups would combine on the major arena house shows and the PPV events, to make those shows have even more of a special aura. This could all change simply by changing the Bischoff-Zbyszko ending as even though things are only a few weeks away, there is shockingly little completed as far as planning for the changes January brings.

  The grandiose idea behind all of this would be to make the WWF into the third biggest wrestling company in the United States. The risk involved in this move is tampering with what in 1997 has been overall an incredibly successful formula making WCW incredibly profitable and resulting in its peak of popularity when it comes to Monday ratings (although TBS wrestling ratings have never been lower in the history of wrestling on the station), house show attendance and the recent Havoc show drew more revenue than any WCW PPV in history, a mark that will almost surely to broken again come Starrcade.

  Not to mention re-opening the
door for the WWF, a company that won’t be diluting its own product by splitting up talent and trying to produce two live prime time shows per week, to regain control of the bulk of the Monday night audience, which seems to be the most important item from a psychological standpoint to both companies in the entire business.

  Without question, as we’ve seen everywhere, going too long with a pat hand in pro wrestling tends to create a stale environment, but wrestling fans, particularly from a television ratings standpoint, put up with staleness for years before it starts to show in the numbers. Messing with a winning formula before it has shown economically to have started its decline is rare in any business, particularly this business.

  The plan as things stand at press time is for Bischoff to win the match, no doubt with oodles of outside interference from the NWO, and likely Scott Hall in particular because they are obviously building toward a Zbyszko vs. Hall match. This would give the NWO control of Nitro, and move the WCW show to the new Thursday night live 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. slot on TBS. The planned announcing teams are Bischoff, Rick Rude and Mike Tenay on Nitro, and Tony Schiavone, Zbyszko and Bobby Heenan on the Thursday show (which will be moved to Wednesday once baseball season starts in April), which is as of yet unnamed, and for the most part not really very planned out either.