10 Resurrected TV Shows That Should’ve Stayed Dead

7. ECW

This is an unusual one. In the mid-'90s, the major professional wrestling companies, WCW and the WWF (now WWE) were both struggling, putting on lousy shows with too much of a child-oriented presentation. Teenaged and young adult fans were looking for an alternative that was trying to appeal to them. Enter ECW. ECW was a small regional professional wrestling company based out of Philadelphia. Helmed creatively by former on-screen manager Paul "Paul E. Dangerously" Heyman, it was completely different from anything else going on in the American wrestling scene at the time. The matches were violent, the storylines were more adult-oriented (if not necessarily "adult,"), and the music was awesome instead of awful generic production music or goofy in-house productions. ECW eventually landed a national TV deal on TNN (now Spike), but signed a badly lopsided contract that put the company in worse shape than it was in before. They warred with the network publicly, including on the show itself when it became clear that TNN was trying to sign WWE. After WWE replaced ECW on TNN, ECW only lasted a few more months before ceasing running shows and filing for bankruptcy. The company assets like the trademarks and videotape library were sold to WWE. In 2005, at the urging of ECW alumni after a documentary DVD about the company sold well, WWE ran an ECW reunion event on pay-per-view. It was a huge success, but it wasn't followed up on...well, until it suddenly was a year later. There are conflicting stories as to how it actually happened, but WWE relaunched ECW as a new show on Syfy. And it was terrible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vNuNaotdgg Seriously, it was just awful. To get the time slot, Syfy made them include arbitrary Syfy and fantasy characters like a vampire named Kevin Thorn. There were a few attempts to make it look different from other WWE shows, like different camera angles and a different set for the wrestlers to make their entrances, but it was too glossy and shiny. It wasn't actually a bad show if you were a wrestling fan; it should've just had a different name. After four years, it was cancelled in 2010.