One MIND-BLOWING Secret From Every Year Of WCW History
12. 1990 | The Real Reason Behind The Production Botches
You will recall that WCW Halloween Havoc 1998 went off the air early in approximately 25% of homes. Despite setting a ratings record with an apologetic re-run of the Goldberg Vs. Diamond Dallas Page main event on the next Nitro, this was still a disaster: the WWF quickly and easily stole back momentum in the Nielsens, and most customers when offered the choice requested a refund instead of a second airing of the pay-per-view on Tuesday evening. This cost WCW a small fortune. Even during its most profitable year, WCW still found a way to piss money up the wall through its incompetence. This particular snafu was blamed on the production liaison to the cable companies, who apparently forgot to tell them that the show was going to air longer than initially instructed.
This sort of thing plagued WCW from the very start. It was as if the promotion was infected by some bacterial incompetence, and Hulk Hogan thought Alexander Fleming couldn’t cut it, Jack.
In 1990, an episode of Worldwide did not air in the New York market because WCW failed to send the tape to the station in time. When apologising, company President Jim Herd said that the show had been sent out "prematurely, without the correct inserts”, resulting in it being preempted. “It was our error, and fate happened”. “Fate happened,” Jesus Christ. As if the Gods themselves edited in ads for spot shows in a different state by mistake.
On episode 419 of David Bixenspan and Kris Zellner’s Between The Sheets podcast, Bixenspan offered up an explanation as to why this sort of thing happened so frequently: WCW was such a low priority at Turner Broadcasting that there was no space for the wrestling promotion at its offices; at the time, WCW production staffers were forced to locate third-party editing suites themselves in order to edit the TV shows. This caused a delay in the process that evidently was far from ideal.