Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff who is the former Boss of WCW Nitro recently talked about the expansion of WCW to three hours and explain why it happened.
WCW Monday Nitro expanded their weekly shows from two hours to three hours in 1998 under Eric Bischoff. One of the biggest reasons behind this expansion was the growing popularity of The parallel show WWE Monday Night RAW which was the biggest rival of WCW back in that time.
Eric Bischoff Reveals Why WCW Expanded To Three Hours
When the rivalry between WCW and WWE started, it never felt like WWE had any chance in front of the veteran professional wrestling promotion WCW. They had the biggest names in the world of professional wrestling in that time, even most of the big names that WWE had and created also switched to WCW during this rivalry.
It had been a very difficult situation for WWE. But surprisingly not only they defeated WCW in this rivalry but ended up buying the promotion at the end and had it go extinct. WCW, which was one of the biggest names in the world of professional wrestling one day got extinct twenty one years ago.
But much like most of the plans that got WCW go extinct, expanding two three awards was one of the major mistakes that the promotion committed during that time. And one of the biggest reasons of it was not having enough star power to maintain a 3 hour show, the third hour remained weak constantly. Needless to say, Eric Bischoff was in charge of WCW by that time.
When WWE RAW switched to three hours in 2012, the promotion suffered the same thing, which was booking its third hour. But WWE was able to manage the situations slowly, and WCW failed to do so. In 2001 the promotion died and it could never be resurrected.
Eric Bischoff who is the former Boss of WCW Nitro recently spoke on his 83 Weeks podcast where he talked about the expansion of WCW to three hours and explain why it happened. He said;
“Truth though, it wasn’t my idea. It was forced upon me. It wasn’t me sitting in a room and going, ‘Hey, I know what, let’s do two hours every week instead of one.’ We were all thrilled with the performance we’re getting out of one hour and one hour is easily manageable. Two hours, when I found out from Brad Siegel, by the way, it was really Brad’s idea, and it probably had a lot to do with ad sales, too.
“They, all of a sudden, were getting hot, and we had more opportunities. You know, for the first time in the history of Turner Broadcasting, they were actually able to sell advertising within wrestling and attract new sponsors. So Brad Siegel came to me one day and said, ‘Hey, guess what we’re going to do?’ ‘ What Brad? What?’ ‘We’re going to do two hours instead of one?’ ‘Why, Brad? Why?’
“And the answer was, you know, you couldn’t argue with it. The cost of doing one hour, and the cost of doing two hours was incrementally the same? I mean, there was a little difference, but not really. But the difference to the network was 24 commercials instead of 12 for the same amount of money, if you get my meaning.
“So from a network perspective, it was an economy of scale, which is why we ultimately went to three hours, because they could make even that much more money, right? We didn’t want to do a three hour show. That’s a frickin pay per view every week. We didn’t want to do that. But we didn’t get to vote.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription