JIM CROCKETT
PROMOTIONS ERA 1985-1988
World Championship Wrestling (Saturday Evenings)
This was the "flagship"
wrestling program for Crockett Promotions on WTBS. For
most of 1985 and 1986 the show was taped on Saturday
mornings at the WTBS studios on Techwood Drive in
Atlanta. Beginning during the college football season
of 1986, it was taped on Sunday mornings because WTBS
needed the studio for the "College Football
Scoreboard" show. In 1987 and 1988, tapings were moved
to Tuesday or Wednesday evenings for periods of time.
The program traditionally aired at 6:05 PM ET, but
occasionally aired at other times on Saturday
evenings. The program had its origins back in the early 1970s when the NWA Georgia territory wrestling promotion began airing its Atlanta show on the broadcast channel WTCG channel 17. Georgia Championship Wrestling was a ratings juggernaut when WTCG became WTBS and went national as the nation's first "superstation" on cable television.
In 1982, the Georgia
promotion changed the name of the program to World
Championship Wrestling. The program kept that
name throughout the WWF era on WTBS and throughout the
Crockett era as well. When the Sunday evening show
became a live-to-tape studio show in the fall of 1986,
the Saturday evening show's name was changed to World
Championship Wrestling - Saturday Edition.
Best of Championship Wrestling (Sunday
Evenings) Georgia Championship Wrestling's
traditional Sunday evening show also had its origins
in the mid-1970s. It was a one hour show
that featured matches from prior weeks on Georgia
Championship Wrestling (and later World
Championship Wrestling.) When WTBS became a popular channel on local and
regional cable systems across the country in the late
1970s, other
territorial promoters would send tapes of their wrestlers from their own TV shows that would air on this show as well, usually
featuring stars who would be appearing in Georgia in
the future or who were booked in upcoming appearances
in Atlanta. It traditionally aired at 6:05 PM, but like the
other programs, it occasionally started at others
times, usually between 5:05 PM and 7:05 PM.
The show maintained its
name through the WWF era and into the Crockett era,
eventually being replaced by the live-to-tape World
Championship Wrestling - Sunday Edition
(on September 7, 1986) and the post-produced arena
program NWA Main Event (on April 4, 1988.)
Championship Wrestling (Saturday Mornings) This show was basically a third hour of World Championship Wrestling that aired the following week early on Saturday mornings, traditionally at 9:35 AM, although the time slot evolved from its original start time of 7:35 AM. The show first came about when the WWF gained control of the WTBS wrestling television shows in July of 1984 through a stock acquisition. One of the principle owners of Georgia Championship Wrestling forced out by the change, Ole Anderson, negotiated his own one-hour time slot at 7:35 AM on Saturday mornings called Championship Wrestling from Georgia. That show debuted August 8, 1984.
It
continued to air during the WWF's entire tenure on
WTBS, but when Jim Crockett Promotions bought
McMahon's TV time on WTBS in March of 1985, Crockett
gained control of all TV slots on the station through
an agreement with Ted Turner. This included
Anderson's early Saturday morning Georgia
show, as well as promoter Bill Watt's Mid-South
Wrestling show that briefly aired on WTBS Sunday
afternoons. Crockett changed the name from Championship
Wrestling from Georgia to simply Championship
Wrestling. Over the next four years that Jim Crockett Promotions was on WTBS, the morning time slot would have many different incarnations, including a a highlights show called NWA Superbouts (began May 9, 1987) and a two-week delayed version of the nationally syndicated NWA Pro Wrestling (began April 2, 1988), and eventually returning to the original Championship Wrestling studio format on Sept. 9, 1988.
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