Interviews
TORCH TALK DAILY with Eric Bischoff: "When those kinds of things started happening, that was the beginning of the end of WCW"
Oct 25, 2009 - 12:00:00 PM |
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On Monday, September 14, PWTorch editor Wade Keller interviewed former WCW President Eric Bischoff an exclusive multi-hour "Torch Talk" interview covering a variety of controversial subjects from the Monday Night War period, his days on WWE TV, his 2006 autobiography, and the "Rise & Fall of WCW" DVD.
The following is the first installment of Part 3(b) of our daily Q&As to be published here at PWTorch.com, which is unprecedented with our VIP-exclusive "Torch Talk" series.
To both READ and LISTEN to the entire interview, you'll want to become a VIP member, which also includes instant access to our newsmaking multi-hour in-depth hard-hitting "Torch Talks" with other top WCW players such as Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, X-Pac, Vince Russo, Ed Ferrara, Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, and others (ALL AVAILABLE AT THIS LINK FOR VIP MEMBERS). To subscribe right now and be the first to read the entire Bischoff "Torch Talk" and have VIP-only access to the audio, click here. The first audio segment and transcript installment is now available for VIP members.
We present today's first question and answer from Part 3(b). Tune in Monday for the next series of questions from Part 3(b).
Wade Keller: Do you think had WCW been profitable somewhere near the peak levels at the time Kelner took over that it would have been extremely difficult for him to justify the decision he was making [to cancel Nitro and Thunder]?
Eric Bischoff: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. This is where, again, revisionist history and commentary and I've read so much about this from people who were so far removed from what was really going on and had no direct knowledge of what was really happening internally at AOL/Time-Warner/Turner that I oftentimes won't even comment on it. Ted Turner - Ted Turner, his name was on the door - Turner Broadcasting was still a part of the Time-Warner/AOL conglomerate, Ted Turner did not even know that the rug was being pulled out from underneath him. If you go back, there's a book by the name of Nina Munk called "When Fools Rush In." It's a good read. I encourage you and your readers and listeners to read that book and then put into perspective what was going on inside of AOL/Time-Warner and Turner and WCW at that time. That book and those circumstances are far more representative of what happened to WCW than all of the nonsense that the talent and the peripheral management and the low-level management have kind of espoused over the years to make themselves look better and feel better.
The real truth is, Jamie Kelner killed the Fusient deal, there's no question about that. I mean, I remember where I was when I got the phone call. The real problem started a year and a half earlier. The real problem and the real downfall didn't start in '99, didn't happen in 2000, and didn't happen in 2001. It happened in the second or third quarter of '98 when the merger was being contemplated and people within Turner Broadcast were trying to figure out a way to position their books and to position their companies so the merger could take place as seamlessly as possible, okay? Again, remember the day that it happened. I may have covered this in the book, and I don't mean to be redundant if I did, but I think it was in July or August of 1998, we were still rocking. Maybe WWE was starting to come back and they were starting to well, but from a financial point of view, from a ratings point of view, from a publicity point of view, we were still on top of the world. No one was concerned what the future held for WCW at that time.
I remember getting a phone call. I don't remember what day of the week it was, but I remember getting a phone call requesting that I come to a meeting at the Techwood offices. My office was over at CNN Center on the 14th floor. I couldn't understand. I never went to meetings at the Techwood office, ever. That's where, like, the real corporate non-operational kind of parts of Turner Broadcasting had their offices. A lot of production and stuff was going on over there. I don't think I had ever been there except for maybe one kind of yea rah-rah session in all of my history with Turner Broadcasting. So anyway, I jumped on my Harley and I wear my jeans to work and my t-shirt that said "Bite Me" or whatever it was (laughs), I showed up with probably two days beard on my face and I walked into this room and there's like 15 people sitting around a long table, probably 12 of them I didn't even recognize. They're all wearing their blue suits and their white shirts and their red ties and their wing-tipped shoes. And I'm thinking, What in the hell is this about? I remember sitting down and having them tell me, "Look, this is going to be the change for WCW. Here's how we're going to change the WCW brand going forward." And I'm thinking to myself, Wait a minute, here's a bunch of people I don't even know who probably don't even watch our show telling me that I'm going to change a show that is making more money than at any time in the history that they have had this franchise. I was immediately not defensive, but confused. I wondered, What the hell? What can this possibly be about.
So each one of these people go around the table, and a lot of them were from New York, from ad sales, they were from marketing, they were from Time-Warner, and on the West Coast, and they all this point of view of what WCW should be. We went around the table until we got to the last guy, and I'm not going to mention his name because he's still got too much power in the industry (laughs), but we got to this last guy and he proceeded to tell me how we're going to go back to being children's television and kid-friendly and all this stuff. And I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, This is insane. And I asked this individual, "Let me ask you, what night of the week does Monday Nitro air." It's like you could have built a house in the time it took to him to respond. And I said, "You don't really watch the show, do you? You don't even know what our product is, do you?" And he didn't. He had no idea. And that was the beginning of the real end because up until that point we had control over our product. We were well within our budgets. We were under budget in a lot of expenses despite the talent fees that everybody likes to talk about. The fact was WCW was profitable at that time. But the minute that we lost control and the brand shift occurred in July or August of 1998, that mandate, and then shortly thereafter we got Standards & Practices coming in and micromanaging the process. I had budgets that had been previously set the year before, mind you, the year before, were slashed in the middle of the year. All of a sudden now we couldn't promote the way we were promoting. We couldn't advertise the way we were advertising. We had to cut back on all of our production. Oh, by the way, we had to produce another two hour series for TBS. When those kinds of things started happening, that was the beginning of the end of WCW.
MORE TO COME...
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