WCW Saturday Night

Black Saturday (1984–1985)

In 1984, WWF owner Vince McMahon, hoping to expand the national reach of his Stamford, Connecticut-based company, bought a majority stake in the Georgia territory, and its WTBS time slot, for $750,000. On July 14 of that year, viewers tuned into World Championship Wrestling expecting to see Gordon Solie and the stars of GCW, only to witness McMahon introducing WWF programming instead, an event now known in professional wrestling lore as Black Saturday.^[6] Freddie Miller, an announcer, was the only member of the original Georgia Championship Wrestling on-air cast who did not either quit in protest or get replaced by McMahon.

McMahon had underestimated two major factors, however. The first was the difference in tastes between wrestling fans from different regions of the United States. GCW matches featured an emphasis on in-ring action with longer and more athletic matches. The WWF, however, was more soap opera-like in character, with cartoonish characters and storylines, and also tended to feature short squash matches in which one wrestler dominated the other. GCW's core audience thus did not receive the WWF product now shown on WTBS well.

Secondly, McMahon had promised Ted Turner that he would produce original programming for the time slot at the WTBS studios in Atlanta. Instead, WWF World Championship Wrestling was mainly used as a recap show, featuring matches which had previously aired on the WWF's main television programs such as WWF Championship Wrestling and WWF All-Star Wrestling, which were originally produced in the Northeast. Eventually, the WWF did have in-studio squash matches on the show on an infrequent basis. During this time, the show was co-hosted by Freddie Miller and Gorilla Monsoon, with Monsoon serving as the play-by-play announcer and Miller serving as the ring announcer. This did not stem the tide of negative viewer reaction to the WWF show, however. Angry viewers deluged WTBS with over a thousand complaints, demanding to know where GCW had gone.

Turner, angry both at the declining ratings and at McMahon's reneging on his promise of original programming for the WTBS time slot, made two moves to correct the problem. Firstly, he offered Ole Anderson, who had refused to sell his minority interest in GCW to McMahon and instead formed a successor promotion known as Championship Wrestling from Georgia (CWG), a 7:00 a.m. time slot on Saturday mornings. He then gave Bill Watts, the owner of Mid-South Wrestling, a one-hour time slot on Sundays. These moves upset McMahon, who had assumed that the WWF would be the sole provider of professional wrestling content on WTBS with his purchase of GCW. Turner disagreed, citing McMahon's aforementioned breaking of his promise to provide original WWF programming for the WTBS time slot.

Under Jim Crockett Promotions (1985–1988)

The decline in ratings for the WWF's Saturday evening show, and the fans clamoring for GCW, began to make the WWF's foray onto WTBS one that lost the federation money. Eventually, McMahon cut his losses and sold the former GCW time slot to Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) for $1 million in March 1985.^[7] The final WWF produced edition of World Championship Wrestling aired on March 30, 1985.^[8] JCP's first edition of World Championship Wrestling aired on April 6, 1985.^[9]

JCP, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and run by Jim Crockett, Jr., was, like CWG and Mid-South, a member of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and ran NWA-branded shows in Virginia and the Carolinas. Crockett's first order of business was to merge his promotion with CWG, thus allowing his wrestlers to compete on CWG's Saturday morning WTBS time slot and vice versa. This deal (which former Georgia Championship Wrestling promoter Jim Barnett helped broker), however, forced the elimination of the Mid-South Wrestling program from the WTBS schedule. Bill Watts ended up selling his promotion (by then known as the Universal Wrestling Federation) to Crockett in 1987. JCP retained the World Championship Wrestling name. Crockett filled the time slot with two hours of original programming filmed in Turner's Atlanta studios.

Turner buyout

The November 5, 1988, edition of World Championship Wrestling began with "Nature Boy" Ric Flair addressing the crowd and pointing out a large group of Turner Broadcasting executives in attendance.^[10] This was a subtle nod to Turner Broadcasting purchasing the assets of Jim Crockett Promotions after the latter had run into financial distress. Ted Turner did not want to lose the consistently high ratings of the Saturday program. This episode launched World Championship Wrestling as a promotion, which initially continued to operate as a member of the NWA. On this first program, the Jim Cornette–Paul E. Dangerously feud took center stage as their dueling versions of the well-known tag team Midnight Express commenced an intense feud that would last until the following February.^[11]

Live episodes

Episodes of WCW Saturday Night were usually filmed well in advance, with the exception of three live editions.

The first one aired on July 9, 1994. Sting wrestled Ric Flair as voted on by fans. Hulk Hogan made his first in-studio appearance, and he and Sting were attacked by Sherri Martel.

The second aired from downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 27, 1995.^[14] It started raining halfway through the outdoor show, causing the ring mat to become slippery at times.

The third live airing, again outdoors, took place on August 10, 1996,^[15] from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. The show took place right before the Hog Wild pay-per-view event, which was held on a Saturday night instead of the usual Sunday night slot for WCW pay-per-views. Hence, WCW Saturday Night was used as a lead-in to the pay-per-view show, much like WCW Main Event was used as a lead-in for Sunday pay-per-views until 1996.

Decline and end (1998–2000)

When WCW introduced the live program Monday Nitro on TNT in September 1995, the pre-taped Saturday Night became secondary in importance. When Thunder premiered in January 1998, Saturday Night became WCW's third-tier program. The majority of airtime would be used to display up-and-comers and recent graduates of the WCW Power Plant (with the occasional squash match) as well as recapping the major events of the other shows. The main event would often feature mid-card performers such as the current Cruiserweight Champion, Television Champion, or U.S. Heavyweight Champion in a non-title match. Hudson, Tenay, Zsbysko and Marshall manned commentating and locker room interviewing duties throughout this period. Backstage, "Mean Gene" Okerlund would regularly promote his WCW Hotline which provided fans with insider information on recent events in the company.^[16]

On April 1, 2000, WCW Saturday Night aired its final episode under its traditional format; one week later, it became a recap show and no longer featured exclusive matches. On July 1, 2000, the show was re-titled WCW Saturday Morning and moved from its established evening timeslot to a late morning timeslot. The show was canceled one month later as a result of low viewership. The last episode aired on August 19, 2000, seven months before WCW was bought out by the WWF and closed its doors entirely. The cancellation of WCW Saturday Night on a Turner-owned network would be the end of professional wrestling in its Saturday night timeslot on TBS until the premiere of AEW Collision on its sister channel TNT on June 17, 2023.