6 Things You Need To Know About ECW's Wrestlenomics

3. Television Ratings - ECW On Sci-Fi

When McMahon decided to resurrect the ECW brand as a separate entity, Vince was conflicted. The excellent sales of the "Rise & Fall of ECW" DVD released in November 2004 and the success (and more importantly the massive internet buzz) that the original "ECW One Night Stand" produced in June 2005 convinced the WWE that they could make a go at an ECW revival. But Vince hates promoting things that he didn't create. News broke during the end of April 2006 that head honcho and "evil genius" Paul Heyman (who had been working in WWE's developmental territory OVW) had signed on alongside Tommy Dreamer to lead a team to restart the ECW brand. Former ECW stars were offered one-year deals (with options for extensions) and WWE developmental talent was evaluated at Ohio Valley and Deep South Wrestling. New bodies were being called up. Originally, WWE wanted a late-night, weekend timeslot on USA Network so they could produce an edgy ECW television program. What they ended up with was very different. Instead, it was a Tuesday night one-hour slot at 9 PM EST on the SciFi network. It wasn't a perfect fit. Still, it had to do. The show lasted several years - June 13, 2006 to February 16, 2010. While it only averaged 1.37 rating, it was significantly above the network's average rating. There was 193 episodes of ECW on SciFi (later ECW on SyFy). During that time, WWE's Monday Night Raw's averaged a 3.53 average, WWE Smackdown averaged a 2.30 rating and TNA Impact averaged a 1.05 average rating. At least this time ECW was beating some real competition. The experiment primed the pump for moving Smackdown to SyFy Network in October 2010. At the beginning of 2010, ECW ended (with talent redistributed to Raw & Smackdown) and NXT, a weekly "rookies" program, took over the slot. The rebooted incarnation of ECW was made up of a mixture former ECW stars, established older stars they didn€™t know what to do with and brand new talent. Arguably, the biggest star to come out of ECW was Heyman's pet project: CM Punk. However, the program also established new life for struggling wrestlers ranging from Ezekiel Jackson to Big Show to Miz & Morrison. It was always clearly positioned as a "C-level" brand, but it did provide excellent opportunity for introducing dozens of new wrestlers to the WWE audience.

Former ECW Stars: Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, Rob Van Dam, Stevie Richards, Nunzio, The Sandman, Balls Mahoney Established Older Stars: Shelton Benjamin, Fit Finlay, Mark Henry, Christian, Kane, The Big Show, Chavo Guerrero Jr, Hardcore Holly, Matt Hardy, Test, Kurt Angle New Talent: Mike Knox, CM Punk, John Morrison, The Miz, Elijah Burke, Kevin Thorn, Evan Bourne, Zack Ryder, Matt Striker, Colin Delaney, Jack Swagger, Yoshi Tatsu, Paul Burchill, Vladimir Kozlov, Kofi Kingston, Tyson Kidd, Kelly Kelly, Layla, Ezekiel Jackson, Marcus Cor Von, Ricky Ortiz, Armando Estrada