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.

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

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Les Thatcher: Studio Promo Tapings at WRAL in the 1970s

Conversations with Les Thatcher:
Local Promo Tapings for Jim Crockett Promotions (1970s) at WRAL
Originally published on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway

From 1974 - 1977, Les Thatcher hosted and conducted the local promos that were inserted into each Mid-Atlantic and Wide World Wrestling show for each local market. The shows were taped at WRAL TV studios in Raleigh, NC. We talked with Les about how and when those promos were done, offering interesting insight to the making of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling on television.

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Les Thatcher

Dick Bourne: The tapings in Raleigh were on a Wednesday night, I remember. Did you do the local spot promos before the tapings?

Les Thatcher: Yes. What we did, we usually started about noon, and we used to average over a hundred spots a Wednesday afternoon.

DB: I can believe it, given the number of markets.

LT: That show was in 30-some markets and we had two 2:20 spots per show, plus some of the 30 second promos we cut to go into some of those markets, too. And then occasionally some of the boys might be booked out to Eddie Graham or down to Atlanta, so we’d cut promos to ship out to them. Of course, as antiquated as it all sounds now, back then it worked. I would go into the (Charlotte) office on Monday and George Scott would give me the line-ups, start times, buildings, towns, and so forth. I had an office in the (wrestling) office, but I also had an office at home, They didn’t much care where I worked as long as I got the stuff done. But I would take that old yellow newsroom-type paper, perforated paper that would fold; Jimmy (Crockett) bought that for me by the box. It would fold easy, and I would take a grease pencil and I would write, for example, Friday Night, June the 6th, Richmond, Virginia, the Coliseum, bell time, whatever, and then I would list a few stars, and then one or two matches and the stipulations. And we often would plug three towns off of the same TV. Those were my cues. Nothing was written out for me, there were no teleprompters, no cue cards.

DB: I always wondered if someone was holding cue cards.

LT: Well, Danny Miller helped out with it. Gene Anderson was working in the office at the time, he helped out with it. George Scott himself would help. What they did was take my folded stack of paper and tape them to the top of a music stand, because the post on the music stand was adjustable, and they would make it just high enough that it would fit right under the camera lens. So let’s say, Flair and I are finishing up the last 2:20 on the Richmond tape, and I’ve got that music stand with the Richmond info sitting in front of me; Ric’s on my left, and he’s doing his pitch. And we had a back timer, like photographers use, and that’s how we kept our time. And that was on a stand sitting right there, too. So anyway, we’d wrap up that 2:20 for Richmond, he would step off to the left, Gene or George or Danny or whoever would change the music stand, and now we’ve got the first 2:20 for Raleigh, for example. And then here comes Blackjack in on my right. And we’d hit that 2:20, and then for the same show we’d do the 2:20 (with Blackjack’s opponent) in on the other side . . .

DB: So you would do each city’s promos back to back, babyfaces and then heels?

Les Thatcher and Bob Caudle (1974)

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LT: Yes, and I got off of that set for two reasons and two reasons only: to go to the bathroom or to grab a quick bite to eat. That was probably the first place I worked where they catered anything in because we were there so long. Now days, it’s standard procedure in both TV companies to have food catered in. But back then, they’d bring in Col. Sanders for us. And also, as well as I was dressed (for the TV), I finally succumbed to crape-soled work shoes because I was standing on that concrete so much.

DB: And your shoes never showed on TV . . .

LT: Exactly. So once I was aware of that, I said, hell I’m driving myself crazy wearing these shoes. We would start at noon and sometimes it was 5 o’clock before we were finished.

DB: I don’t see how your voice held out.

LT: I’m not sure, either, to tell you the truth, Dick. And the funny thing is, I got that 2:20 in my head, you’re doing a hundred of these every Wednesday. But there were times that someone would step on the plug of that back timer, or for whatever reason it would stop, I would keep the interview going, and I swear to you, I could finish it within a couple of seconds one way or the other of the exact time, because I had done them so many times. And then I go to Knoxville and do my spots up there (for Southeastern Championship Wrestling.)

DB: I guess you just get in a rhythm.

LT:  Exactly. My schedule, when I was doing both shows between November of 1974 and February or March of 1978, before I moved to Knoxville, I would, as I said, go in (to the Charlotte office) and get the stuff from George (Scott) on Monday. I was helping with the magazine, and the TV in Charlotte, plus I was wrestling a couple of nights a week, and then we’d go to a show on Tuesday, and then drive up from Charlotte early that Wednesday morning, did promos from noon to 5 o’clock, grabbed a bite to eat, I was hosting the one show, Bob Caudle was hosting the other. And then once I started doing the Knoxville show, I think Jimmy was afraid people would see Les on two shows in the same market, and that’s basically when Ed Capral came in.

DB: That must have been in 1975 or 1976, because when I first discovered Wide World Wrestling on channel 13 in Asheville, Ed Capral was the host. I never knew you hosted one of the (Mid-Atlantic) shows until I read it on your site. We didn't get the second Mid-Atlantic show where I grew up.

LT: You mentioned channel 13 in Asheville earlier; do you know in that three-station market what our share or percentage of homes tuned in to that show was?

DB: I remember knowing that it was huge . . .

LT: Between 70-80%.

DB: Good grief! 

LT: Yep, when our show was on the air in that three station market, our show was watched by between 70 and 80 percent of the homes available to those three stations.

DB: Unbelievable.

LT: Another guy in the Crockett office, who wasn’t involved in the wrestling, we put together a promotional packet, laid out the design for the little cover and all that, and in there we had a sampling of the different markets we were in and what kind of shares and numbers we pulled there. That’s how I remember the Asheville thing so vividly. So when people think wrestling’s popularity started with Hulk Hogan, it just drives me crazy. But anyway, we’d do the TV in Raleigh on Wednesday, and then Thursday, I’d wrestle for Crockett someplace, then Friday morning, I would get on Piedmont Airlines, remember them?

DB: I certainly do. My Dad flew them every week for awhile.

LT: I would get on a Piedmont flight in Charlotte that hopped into Greenville/Spartanburg, then into Asheville, and it finally got me to Knoxville. Ron (Fuller) would pick me up at the airport, we’d do lunch, go to his house, we’d lay out the TV, I helped him with the booking along with Nelson Royal, then we’d work Knoxville Friday night, and then do TV Saturday morning, work a house show some place Saturday night and I’d get back on the bird Sunday morning, and I’d do it all over again.

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Special thanks to Les Thatcher for his insights on the studio promo tapings at WRAL. [GATEWAY]

Les educated us on the promo tapings in the 1970s. Jim Cornette shared some amazing information on one of his podcasts about the Crockett studio promo tapings in ther 1980s, at the make-shift TV studio in the garage at Briarbend Drive:

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

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In 1974-1975, Les Thatcher and Bob Caudle both hosted a separate hour of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling taped at the studios of WRAL in Raleigh NC. Bob's show was the primary show (or "A" show) and aired in all Mid-Atlantic markets. Les's "B" show aired in select markets that supported a second hour of JCP wrestling, and usually on a different station on those markets.

For example, in the Greenville/Asheville/Spartanburg market, the Caudle show aired on WFBC-TV channel 4, the NBC affiliate out of Greenville SC at 1:00 PM on Saturday afternoons. Thatcher's show aired at 11:30 PM on WLOS-TV channel 13, the ABC affiliate out of Asheville NC.

 

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Dutch Mantell Remembers Working with Bob Caudle

The great Dutch Mantell reminisces about his days calling Smokey Mountain Wrestling with Bob Caudle, while reflecting back to his childhood growing up in North Carolina and watching wrestling on WFBC-4 in Greenville and WLOS-13 in Asheville. Bob Caudle was the first announcer he remembers as a kid. Good stuff.

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Bob Caudle and The Benefit of the Doubt

The following is from an August  2001 Wrestling Classics message board post. These are wonderful observations, wonderfully written, about Bob Caudle.

I've listened to a lot of Bob Caudle in the past few days and I've grown to appreciate him even more. He's got that Charles Osgood-just-stopped-by-on-the-way-to-see-Mama-at-the-retirement-home-and-decided-to-call-an-hour-of-wrestling-matches thing going that was the perfect anchor for the madness going on around him.

He never overplayed the face/heel thing. He always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt. Greg Valentine wasn't this "evil rulebreaker who cheated to win," he was a "fine athlete who's double-tough." Then when he actually did cheat, Caudle was there to express just the right amount of shock and disappoint (it was more "Greg, how could you?" than "You sonofabitch!").

Then when someone would explode (think Flair with those red-faced, vein-popping promos), it really seemed like something big was going down. Caudle would gradually inch away from the wrestler ... hold the mic at arms length.

I miss the quiet moments in wrestling. Because when everything's playing at 11, there's no where else to go.

Wrestling Classics, in a thread titled "Mid-Atlantic TV", response to original post written by username 13 Time Jumanji Champ, posted at 8:37 AM, August 17, 2001.