The following editorial comes from Vince Russo. You can get more articles from Russo on his official website, PyroAndBallyhoo.com.
“In preparation for my interview with RD Reynolds, the co-author of the book, “The Death of WCW”, I went over the ratings of the shows I was actually involved in writing during my short tenure at WCW. Going into tomorrow’s discussion with RD, I just wanted to assure that we had the facts to look at, as it pertained to my true performance at WCW.
The numbers are posted on-line for anybody to take a look at. You can crunch them just like I did in order to get a true picture of what the numbers were during my time at WCW.
9/20/99-10/11/99 (4 SHOWS) AVERAGE RATING 2.9
These were the four shows prior–a month’s worth–to Ed Ferrara and myself joining WCW.
10/18/99-1/10/00 (13 Shows) AVERAGE RATING 3.2
During this time, Ed and I were concentrating on breaking down the old foundation that was in place, and building a new one as we saw fit. Let me also note here, that of the first 13 shows that Ed and I wrote, 11 of them were 3-hour shows. If you want to compare apples to apples–take away the two two-hour shows that Ed and I wrote and our average is still a 3.2 over the 11 three-hour shows. My last show on 1/10/00 drew a 3.4–our highest rating to date.
1/17/00-4/3/00 (12 SHOWS) AVERAGE RATING 2.7
This is the period in which I went home, and Kevin Sullivan and his creative team took over the writing of the show. As you can clearly see, the average WCW rating went down even further below the starting point at which Ed and I started. Note: all of these shows are now at two hours.
EDITORIAL: It was during that 12 week period, that I felt WCW truly lost its audience, and it was going to be a difficult struggle and battle, to ever win them back. That is MY OPINION.
4/10/00-7/3/00 (13 SHOWS) AVERAGE RATING 2.8
These were the first 13 shows that Eric and I did together, with many of them being written with us not on the same page. NOBODY KNOWS THIS STORY, because I never told it before, but things got so dysfunctional between Eric and I, that Brad Siegel, the President of both TBS/TNT at the time, called an emergency meeting between the three of us to try to straighten out our issues. This meeting took place THE WEEK PRIOR TO BASH AT THE BEACH
7/10/00-8/21/00 (7 SHOWS) AVERAGE RATING 2.5
After the combination of our meeting with Brad Siegel and Bash at the Beach, Eric was not much involved with creative from that point on. Here, once again, I tried to break down the things I didn’t like that Eric and I had worked on, in order to once again try to rebuild.
8/28/00-10/2/00 (6 SHOWS) AVERAGE RATING 3.1
These were the last 6 shows I ever wrote for WCW.
10/9/00-3/26/00 (23 SHOWS–PRE-EMPTED TWICE) 2.3
The last 23 shows of Nitro that I was not a part of.
Those are the true numbers, and the only REAL FACTS that are on record as it pertains to my failure/success at WCW.
Did I kill WCW?
That all depends solely on whether you chose to analyze the facts, or strictly go off opinion.”
