(The Greensboro/Winston-Slaem, High Point DMA)
Feb. 1964 - Summer of 1974
In February 1964, WGHP began airing Championship Wrestling on Saturday evenings. The show was filmed (later taped) at the WGHP studios on the second floor of the Sheraton Hotel on North Main Street in High Point NC. The host was WGHP news and sports personality Charlie Harville ("The Voice of Wrestling in the Piedmont") who became a broadcasting institution in North Carolina and would become only the second sportscaster inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. It was Harville who spoke the first words on the new station when it first went on the air four months earlier on October 14, 1963.
The studio was very small, and as a result had a smaller ring, so much so that Tex McKenzie once complained to Harville it was not large enough for him to properly and effectively execute his bulldog headlock! But the cozy atmosphere defined what made studio wrestling so special during this era. Behind Charlie Harville's desk, photos and event posters would be taped to the wall and the camera would zoom in on them when Harville would run down the card at the beginning of the show or when doing local promos.
The early shows were shot on film and were only seen on WGHP. Later, they switched to video tape and the show was seen not only locally, but also sent to other markets. (For example, the High Point show was seen on Saturday nights in Asheville NC on WLOS-13. When they ceased tapings at WGHP, that show was replaced by the 2nd Mid-Atlantic taping out of Raleigh, hosted by Les Thatcher, and then finally the new show Wide World Wrestling with Ed Capral.)
Championship Wrestling aired at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday evenings for most of it's 10 year run on WGHP. There was a brief period of time in the fall and winter of 1966 when the show was split in to two 30 minute programs airing at 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM on Saturday. And in an odd scheduling move, the show aired at 6:00 p.m. on Friday night from September 1967 to February 1968.
Harville was loved by wrestling fans, and he also served as ring announcer for a period of time for the Greensboro shows in the Greensboro Coliseum.
| BASIC
INFORMATION | |
| Call Letters: | WGHP |
| Channel Number: | 8 |
| Network
Affiliate: | ABC (Now FOX) |
| Began Taping: | February 1964 |
| Ceased Taping: | Summer 1974 |
| Play-by-play
Host: | Charlie Harville |
| Color
Commentators: | No regular color commentators. Different wrestlers served as color commentators throughout the run. |
| Ring Announcer:
| Wally Dusek, George Harbin |
| Night Taped: | Tuesday |
| Show Name: | Championship Wrestling |
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Charlie Harville talks with an angry Rip Hawk on the set of Championship Wrestling at WGHP. |
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| Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson talk with Charlie Harville at ringside on Championship Wrestling. Usually when Charlie laughed like that, Rip was thanking him for being one of Rip and Swede's biggest supporters. (Hawk and Harville were good friends off camera.) |
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| A promotional photograph of George Becker, Charlie Harville, and Johnny Weaver at WGHP TV. |
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| Harville waits at his broadcast position to return to the air during a commercial break. |
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| Charlie Harville interviews Southern Heavyweight Champion Johnny Weaver. Rip Hawk, one half of the Atlantic Coast Tag Team Champions, is over Harville's right shoulder. Wally Dusek is seen waiting to do the ring introductions in the ring. |
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| Charlie Harville interviews Mr. Wrestling Tim Woods. |
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| Host Charlie Harville interviews manager Homer O'Dell and his team of Bronco Lubich and Aldo Bogni. |
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| Wahoo McDaniel chops Johnny Valentine in an impromptu battle in the WGHP studios. It was Wahoo's first appearance on WGHP as he prepared to enter the Mid-Atlantic territory full time in 1974. |
VARIOUS NEWSPAPER AND TV GUIDE ADS FEATURING CHARLIE HARVILLE
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"Remembering A Legend": A special graphic shown on WFMY-2 television (Greensboro) during commercial breaks allowing the death of Charlie Harville in 2002. |
