When WCW launched Monday Nitro on September 4, 1995 they made a point to mention that it was going to be a live show every Monday night. It was a huge thing to have a live wrestling show every Monday night. It's not like everybody was on the internet in the mid to late 1990s to read spoilers, but it was noticeable when a show was live compared to when it was on tape. Remember that WWE was taping Raw a lot of the time. The schedule until the summer of 1999 was to do a live Raw on the Monday, then tape the next Raw on the Tuesday and they did it that way for years. Then Smackdown started in August 1999 and they changed it up so Raw was live on Mondays while Smackdown was the taped Tuesday show. What's interesting about the live Nitro idea is that Eric Bischoff, who was running WCW at the time, has said that he didn't really plan on making that pitch. He just said it as something to impress his boss Ted Turner in a meeting and didn't expect Turner to give them that opportunity. When it happened, it turned out that it was the best thing for the company. They grew quickly the point where they were beating WWE on Monday night consistently for nearly two years. The launch of Nitro was huge for WCW as was going live every week. It really changed the landscape of wrestling. Without it, who knows what Raw would be like today.
John wrote at WhatCulture from December 2013 to December 2015. It was fun, but it's over for now. Follow him on Twitter @johnreport. You can also send an email to mrjohncanton@gmail.com with any questions or comments as well.
