At the height of the Monday Night Wars, millions of fans were watching wrestling every single week. WCW and the WWF each hovered around 5.0 on the ratings scale every week. These days, Raw tends to earn about a 3.0 to 3.2 every week, meaning millions of viewers are gone from a little over 10 years ago. Quite simply, those people just stopped watching wrestling. Some of them were casual fans, sucked in by the coolness of wrestling and the hip catchphrases but a lot of them were hardcore WCW/NWA fans who hated WWE's product. These were the southern wrestling fans, the one who grew up on Jerry Lawler and the Jarretts. The same fans who used to pack the Superdome for the Junkyard Dog and watch Ricky Steamboat battle Ric Flair for over an hour. Southern wrestling fans are traditionally more technically-minded than their northern counterparts. Southerners like mat-based wrestling with realistic storylines and workers with legitimate athletic backgrounds. That's why people like the Funks, Von Erichs, and Briscos became stars all over the region. On the other hand, the northern crowds tend to like cartoonish, muscle bound guys like Hulk Hogan, Bruno Sammartino, and Brock Lesnar. When the WWF purchased WCW, many southern fans saw it as the circus coming to town and just shut off wrestling, never to return. A relaunch of the WCW brand with southern roots (like Dusty booking) would entice southern wrestling fans to give the product another chance. WCW, while a failed brand name, was once an extremely popular brand name that could become valuable again if used properly.