TV Wrestling in Charlotte a Big Success (1978)

Fresh off my post about the monster TV ratings for JCP in Charleston, SC in 1978, here is another article about the strength of Crockett programing in that same year, this time in Charlotte, NC.
 

PRO WRESTLING ENDURES,
PROSPERS WEEKLY ON TV
By Mark Wolf
The Charlotte Observer, March 25, 1978

 

Crunch. Slam. Piledrive. Thud. Smack. Kick. “You turkey neck.” Sleeper. Pin.

Professional wrestling is on the air.

The cast changes, heroes and villains arrive and depart, the belts, symbolic of myriad championships, change hands and the sport itself is given the back of the sports establishment’s hand. But televised professional wrestling endures; no, it prospers.

Consider. Except for local news, "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" is the longest running show on Charlotte’s Channel 3 (WBTV). “It’s been on at least close to 20 years,” says John Edgerton, WBTV managing director. “I’ve been here since 1957 and I can’t remember when it started. The records probably don’t go back that far.” (Mid-Atlantic Gateway Note: it was Jan. 11th, 1958).

The one-hour show, which airs Saturday afternoon on Channel 3 (the time varies) was watched in 63,000 households during a recent ratings period. A similar show, Wide World Wrestling, is shown at noon Saturdays on Channel 36 (WRET) and drew 43,000 households in the same period.

“It probably enjoys the longest continuing run of any program on television,” says WRET station manager, Dave Uhrich. “I can’t think of any other syndicated show that’s been on that long except maybe some religious show.”

Charlotte promoter Jim Crockett produces and packages both programs and provides them free to the Charlotte stations and 22 other stations in North and South Carolina and Virginia. Crockett gives the show away in return for commercial time during the broadcasts to promote the live wrestling shows he stages in the three states. He also sells the show to stations in West Virginia, Georgia, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Kansas.

The wrestling show is an everybody wins situation. Crockett gets an hour’s promotion for his arena shows, and the stations get not only free programming, but can sell commercials during the show.

“Because television is seasonal, there are not commercials in all of the slots that are available,” says WBTV program director John Hutchinson. “Actually, we have movies we could make more money from, but we have a need for a wrestling program. The ratings are very good. If we weren’t getting that particular show, we would go out and look for another one.”

“It (wrestling) appeals to so many different levels. The nostalgia of people who watched it when they were kids, the morality play element of good against bad, the football fan who likes to sit in his armchair and work out his aggressions, older people, kids, it cuts across all strata. With everything else changing in society, wrestling has always been popular on TV. There’s something going on there, something that taps a need in a lot of different people.”

According to Crockett, the show outdraws Wide World of Sports, NCAA Football and NCAA Basketball. “In Greenville, SC, we delivered more adult males than ‘Starsky and Hutch’ or ‘Kojak’, and they’re in prime time.”

Crockett’s shows, produced before a live audience every Wednesday night in the Raleigh studios of WRAL-TV, are technically proficient and include slow-motion replays of winning maneuvers. (“Let’s have another look at that figure four leglock, Bob.”)

Bob Caudle

Bob Caudle, now a WRAL salesman, formerly an on-air personality, and Crockett’s brother, David, announce the Mid-Atlantic (Channel 3) program. Former wrestler George Scott hosts the Wide World (Channel 36) version with a guest commentator – usually a wrestler, but occasionally Jim Crockett. (“Boy, do I hate doing that,” says Crockett.)

The same corps of wrestlers appear on each show. The format includes four or five matches interspersed with interviews. The interviews afford the wrestlers an opportunity to develop their personalities, bad-mouth upcoming opponents, and hype the next live show. Interviews promoting matches in each market area are spliced into the tape which goes to the station in that market. 

Generally, a headline wrestler (Ric Flair, Greg Valentine, Wahoo McDaniel, Ricky Steamboat, or the like) opposes a lesser light. Occasionally, though, Crockett matches a pair of headliners. Recently, Valentine captured the Mid-Atlantic championship from McDaniel on TV and broke Wahoo’s leg in the process.
Whether wrestling is real, semi-real or a complete sham is beside the point (says Crockett). “I don’t believe anybody has ever been able to go to one of our matches and walk away and say it’s fake.”

At its best, wrestling is akin to a superb magic act. It works to the extent that the audience wants it to. 

Just like the old Mets slogan, “You’ve gotta believe.”

 

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Greenville Wrestling Host Bill Krieger Passes Away

We've just learned that Bernhard Krieger passed away in Greenville SC on Christmas day, December 25, 2023.  He was 98 years old. Word came to us from Mid-Atlantic Gateway contributor Don Holbrook who came across his obituary online. 

Known as Bill Krieger on WFBC (now WYFF) channel 4 during his on-air days, he briefly hosted "live" professional wrestling in 1961 at the station. He was the sports director for the station at that time.

Back in 2005, Krieger was extremely helpful to me when I spoke to him about the history of wrestling at WFBC.

For more about WFBC as a location for Jim Crockett Promotions TV wrestling, visit the WFBC Studio Wrestling page.

Click here for all posts tagged with Bill Krieger on Studio Wrestling. 

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Funks vs. Briscos in the Tampa Sportatorium

Norm Kimber's Greatest Call (Toronto 1977)

We occasionally feature calls or introductions by some of our favorite ring announcers. 

 

Toronto's Norm Kimber made a memorable, dramatic call of Harley Race's NWA title victory over Terry Funk at Maple Leaf Gardens in 1977:    

 

 

 

The commentators for the match were former NWA Champion Whipper Billy Watson and former NWA President Sam Muchnick. The match took place February 6, 1977.

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A Belt for a Champion

If there was ever a true champion for wrestling fans, especially in the Carolinas and Virginia, it was Bob Caudle.  And a champion needs a belt.

Bob Caudle with his own title belt, a gift from the Mid-Atlantic Gateway, at his home in Raleigh, NC.

Originally published on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

One of the things that I've always felt made Bob Caudle so special to wrestling fans from several generations is the fact that he was the steady constant on our televisions every week for near 34 years. The wrestlers came and went, but Bob was the constant. Almost every single week from when he took over for Ray Reeve at WRAL in Raleigh on All Star Wrestling in 1961 to the last days of Smokey Mountain Wrestling in the 1990s, Bob was the constant. 

He is best remembered as the voice of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling throughout the 1970s and 1980s. His friendly smile and welcoming voice was a warm embrace every Saturday afternoon, and the relationship he established with fans transcended that time to where even well into the 2010s, Bob was attending fan conventions and received warmly by fans. 

If there was ever a true champion for wrestling fans, especially in the Carolinas and Virginia, it was Bob Caudle. And a champion needs a belt.

The belt on display at my home before making the trip to Raleigh. Also in this photograph are Bob's Hall of Heroes plaque which he gave to me on my 50th birthday (and I treasure), as well as the photograph used for the main plate of the belt.

 

The Mid-Atlantic Gateway presented Bob with a special, one of a kind, commemorative belt paying tribute to the Voice of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. It was presented to him and his wife Jackie on June 17, 2024 at his home in Raleigh. 

 

I wasn't sure how Bob would receive it. While he loves reminiscing about the "old days," he generally is not at all interested in holding on to wrestling memorabilia. Soon to be 94 years old, and in a no-holds-bar match against the ravages of father-time, Bob said it will be a tough task for anyone to take this title away from him. "They will bury me with this!" he said with a big smile. 

It was a nice moment with a truly wonderful man.

- D. Bourne 

See All Posts that feature Bob Caudle

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Jim Cornette Explains TV Distribution Process for JCP in the 1980s

Crockett TV Production / Local Promos

The following is a transcript from a brief segment of the popular "Cornette's Drive Thru" podcast. Jim Cornette shed light on the process Jim Crockett Promotions went through in the 1980s to duplicate and distribute their TV shows. He also covered the technical process by which they inserted the local TV promo segment seach week, taped at the Briarbend Drive garage studio. (The transcript is footnoted with some of our observations as well.)

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Arcadian Vanguard

The discussion took place on Episode #261 of the podcast, about 55 minutes in:

"The way they duplicated their television shows, now this is primitive, but remember this is 40 years ago, and it is actually the way that, you know, small budget promotions operated like this in house up until the times that the territories went away.

Let's say we go to Gaffney, SC, on a Tuesday night and we'd do the syndicated television taping at the college gym there in Gaffney. It's 60 miles from Charlotte, so it's about an hour drive. They owned their own television truck, the NEMO truck - - National Electronics Mobile Operation. They'd drive the truck an hour down to one of these high school or college gym around Charlotte. They'd set up the lights, they'd wire everything, they'd run the cables - - they shoot two hours of television: NWA Worldwide and NWA Pro. And that goes from 7:30 to 10:00. And each show they role live-to-tape, and you know they're gonna put a VTR in, they roll it in the truck. They leave black holes for the commercial spots and for the local promos.*

Then they'd drive the truck back to Charlotte and they'd park it back behind the office at Briarbend. And they'd take the two master tapes in, and - - remember ol' Leonard? The guy that did the night work there that alerted me that they were throwing away the entire film archive of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling when Turner broadcasting took over and bought everything.** Leonard would put the dadgum tapes on, and I don't know how many they could make at the same time, and this was the old one inch video reels, right? So you can imagine, you gotta unroll those and put them on the spool, and get 'em all synced up and everything. And then he would hit the button and they would make multiple duplicates of that master tape at one time. And then he'd do nothing all night but just run 'em back and copy the tapes over and over - - however many they could make at a time times however many, because Wednesday morning about 9:00, Gene Anderson would be in there with Jackie Crockett on the camera and all the top babyfaces and heels would come in and do local promos, from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 or 4:00 sometimes. And then you'd immediately hop in the car and drive three hours to Raleigh or go to the airport to fly somewhere, whatever the case.

But, what they would do, honest to God, is they would sync the tape up for let's say Philadelphia, we got local promos to do for Philadelphia because we got a show coming up at the Civic Center. So whatever tape was going to the TV station in Philadelphia, they would reel it up to the exact point of the babyface interview segment that needed to be inserted and we'd record those interviews right onto the tape that was actually going to the TV station. And as soon as we did that interview then they'd jump ahead to the heel segment, you know, in between segments 5 and 6 or whatever, and they'd do the two minute and twenty eight second interview for them.

The interviews were 2:28 because they left a second to get in and a second to get out, else wise they're rolling over program***, right? Once the Philly interviews were done, they'd stick it back in the case, put a label on it, and whether it was Klondike Bill or Bunk Harris, whoever that day wasn't going to get chicken at Price's Chicken Coop for lunch****, they would take the tapes to the bus station and put them on a bus to the television station in the city that was going to air it that weekend.

So it went out on Wednesday evening and it got there on Thursday. A lot of promotions did this, they would put posters and fliers for sponsors in small towns, they'd put 'em on a bus in those days, they'd put the TV tape on a bus. And they used to have a thing called Delta Dash where before these overnight services were just common in every city in America, they would take it and put it in a box, and take it the airport and they would put it on a Delta plane. You could Delta Dash something for something like $99, and it would go on a plane, and somebody had to pick it up at baggage claim at the other end.

But that's what they would do, they would roll these interviews into the actual tape to the TV station that weekend, there was no post production per se in terms of "OK we're going to shoot all these interviews and were gonna slate them and then were going to go back and insert them, blah, blah, blah." No, that's why the local interviews don't exist anywhere else except in tapes of the television program that aired in that specific market.

So when you see these local promos with Tony Schiavone and the orange background or sometimes the blue background, they had and the chyron, 'Tonight! Charlotte! Tonight Greenville, Chicago!' or whatever the case from Crockett Promotions, that has to be off the actual air broadcast of that television program that weekend [that was taped at home by a fan on a VCR] because they didn't exist anywhere else."

Footnotes:

*This was the big revelation for me: I had always assumed the local promos were sent to stations on a separate tape that would be inserted into the local brodcast by the station like any other local commercial. 

**I'm assuming this actually happened when Crockett and Dusty moved the head office from Charlotte to Dallas in 1987 or 1988 and closed down Briarbend Drive, but perhaps the TV work Jim describes above continued in Charlotte at Briarbend after the move to Dallas until the sale to Turner in late 1988.

***Eureka! It now makes sense to me why there was always this short time gap before and after local interview spots where you would see the show's logo or whatever and could hear the crowd noise in the background of the studio going back to those days. They left room for the local promo to be a second or two early or late when taped directly into the master tape.  

****George South was the one who first told us about the weekly Chicken Coop ritual back in the day, and how he along with Bunk Harris or Klondike Bill would sometimes make the pick-up. George saud he earned more from tips from the boys than he made wrestling at the time.

PODCAST INFORMATION
Visit JimCornette.com for complete information including links on both of his wildly popular podcasts on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcasting Network.

LOCAL PROMOS IN THE 1970s
Jim was speaking about the procedures in the mid-1980s. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the local promotional spots were taped at WRAL TV on the day of the weekly tapings. Learn more from Les Thatcher here.

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Nick Pond Leaves WRAL and "Championship Wrestling" (1971)

WRAL News personality Nick Pond hosted the Raleigh-only version of the Jim Crockett Promotions wrestling show known simply as Championship Wrestling in the 1960s and very early 1970s. 

Pond left WRAL at the end of March, 1971 to become the public relations director of the Durham Chamber of Commerce. He stayed with that job until August, 1973. He returned to WRAL shortly thereafter as a news anchor, but never called wrestling again.

During at least part of the time (and perhaps the whole time) Pond was working at the Durham Chamber, Elliot Murnick (son of Raleigh area promoter Joe Murnick) hosted the version of the Mid-Atlantic show that was exclusive to the Raleigh market. 

Soon after, the dual-tapings ended, and Crockett began taping two different versions of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. The first, hosted by Bob Caudle (who had hosted the syndicated All Star Wrestling for over a decade), was the "A" show that went to all Crockett TV markets. The second, the "B" show hosted by Les Thatcher, went to markets where JCP was able to barter both shows. Usually (but not always) the  second "B" show aired on a different station in that market.

Clipping courtesy of Carroll Hall.

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Wrestling's Success on Charleston Television (1978)

Wrestling Audience Greatly Expanded by TV Saturday
By Bob Gillespie, Charleston Post & Courier, September 23, 1978

TV wrestling – a success story? Go ahead. Laugh. That’s just what both the pro wrestling promoters and local television stations are doing, all the way to the proverbial bank.

For several months now, I’ve followed this TV sports column and I have yet to see anything written on what has to be the tube’s most successful enterprise in the realm of sports. I shall now try to correct this omission.

What am I talking about? Football? Basketball? Women’s field hockey? Tournament-level tiddlywinks? “No” to all the above.

Try professional wrestling.

 

"Wrestling?" you ask, looking down your cultured nose with disdain. That Roman gladiator spectacle of the masses, with costumed clowns flying through the air like so many comic book characters? TV wrestling – a success story? Surely I jest, you say. And you probably laugh.

Go ahead. Laugh. That’s just what both the pro wrestling promoters and local television stations are doing, all the way to the proverbial bank.

The fact is, wrestling, especially on television, has been growing in popularity over the last few years – by leaps and bounds greater than any you’ll see in the ring. And no one realizes – and appreciates – that fact more than Charleston area television management.

On any given Saturday, year round, the Charleston viewer can see wrestling twice in one day. That’s if he doesn’t have cable TV. If he does, add another show on Saturday and one on Sunday. And if you live far enough toward Savannah where you can pick up that city’s television, you can catch two more showings, or five more programs per Saturday.

There’s a reason that pro wrestling is on so often: it’s popular.

“The shows are rather popular in this area, I know that,” says WCIV-TV (Channel 4) Program Director Don Moody. “If we have to move the show (1 pm Saturday) for a network thing, we really get the phone calls.”

Program Director Jim Shumaker of WCBD-TV (Channel 2), whose station carries wrestling Saturday night at 11:45, is even more emphatic. “It’s just unbelievable,” he said. “It leads its time period against all comers. People in this area are really hung up on this wrestling.”

How hung up? “In the last important ratings book, which was back in May, wrestling at midnight Saturday was pulling a 52 percent share of the audience,” Shumaker said. By comparison, Saturday Night Live on NBC (Channel 4) gets 32 percent, while Channel 5 (WSCS-TV), carrying Blockbuster Theatre, takes a 21 percent share.”

 

Channel 2 isn’t the only beneficiary of wrestling, either. When Channel 4 runs wrestling at 1 pm, it gathers in 46 percent shares of the audience at that time, as opposed to 31 percent for Soul Train (Channel 5) and 19 percent for American Bandstand (Channel 2). “They’re obviously doing something right,” added Shumaker.

“They” in this case is an outfit called Jim Crockett Promotions out of Charlotte, NC, who provides their Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling in the Carolinas/Virginia areas. Crockett not only handles the live events at local arenas, such as Charleston’s County Hall operation on Friday nights, but also produces the television shows, filming them weekly at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC.

The most ironic thing about the whole operation is the deal between Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and the local television stations. The stations get a program with a high rating – virtually for free.

“Crockett supplies us with the taped program,” Shumaker said. “We give them two one-minute-40-second commercials for promotion of their local wrestling matches. We get the program, which leads its time slot, plus 10 minutes of commercial time to sell. And they’re easy to sell, too.”

Why give away a program when stations that run movies or even network programs against the wrestling - and still lose out – are paying big bucks for those time-fillers? Henry Marcus, who promotes wrestling for the Crockett operation in this area from his Columbia base, has an answer.

“It’s simple,” said Marcus, who started wrestling promotion in 1934. “Television is great, whether you’re selling wrestling or tooth paste. It’s the greatest advertising device man has ever invented. When you can have 75 million people watch the Ali-Spinks fight, you can’t beat it.”

The Crockett TV blitz started “about 18 years ago under Jim Crockett, Sr., the father of the Jim Crockett who runs the operation now,” said Canadian native, Sandy Scott, himself a former popular wrestler who now promotes the Mid-Atlantic product in Roanoke, VA, after covering the Greenville area the last three years. “The first station was Channel 7 in Roanoke in 1950 or so, and the second was WFBC-TV in Greenville.”

Scott, like most people involved in TV wrestling, is at something of a loss to explain its popularity. “I don’t know for sure, but it’s tremendous. Of course, we feel we offer the top wrestling talent, and the best will always hold the audience.”

“Wrestling did well without television, but TV has expanded the number of people we reach,” he added. “Folks in smaller towns see it now.”

The only thing that may be holding pro wrestling back now is the item referred to at the beginning of this piece: its image. Sportswriters and some sports fans deride pro wrestling, question its status as legitimate sport. That’s actually putting it mildly; wrestling is often called a fake, a circus, a joke and the like.

I’m not getting into the merits of such arguments. I like my skin in one piece, thank you. As one local television sportscaster put it, “I used to call wrestling a phony, but I learned you don’t do that in a crowded bar.” But the arguments against wrestling still exist.

If the arguments don’t seem likely to change, though, the image may be doing so. “The wrestling programs on TV draw all spectrums,” Channel 2’s Shumaker noted. “We sell it locally, but our national salesmen say the general feeling among the big sponsors is that wrestling appeals to the ‘blue collar and beer’ crowd.”

“That’s not necessarily so. It seems to be drawing more young people, but it gets men, women and children, all ages. They seem to be expanding the market.”

For sure. Said Marcus, “Our TV survey man in Charlotte estimated that on any Saturday, some 1.1 million people are watching wrestling on stations in the Carolinas and Virginia.” “Blue collars and beer” or not, that’s a heap of potential customers for the TV sponsors.

So whether you love wrestling, hate wrestling, or just don’t care, you’ll keep on seeing it on the tube for a long time. “We tend to take it for granted that it’s going to capture its time slot,” Shumaker said. “I guess you’d have to call it a success story.”

And television is not inclined to give up success stories.

*********************************
Photos and graphics were added by the Mid-Atlantic Gateway, and were not part of the original article.

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