WPCQ-36 CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA
"Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" and "World Wide Wrestling" featuring Bob Caudle, David Crockett and others.
Reportedly, the move was scheduled for WCCB-18 in Charlotte, across the street from the old Charlotte Coliseum, but that plan fell through and they hastily changed plans and moved to WPCQ.
The WPCQ studios were hardly suited for wrestling. The ring had to be set in the studio at an angle in order for there to be room to fit in the cameras, announce desk and the studio hosts. Everyone involved reportedly detested these conditions, but regardless, the small confines were home to Crockett TV wrestling for nearly two years before moving out into small arenas to tape the weekly shows in 1983.
WPCQ was also the home for the short lived East Coast Wrestling which showed arena matches and older studio tapes. The show was hosted by veteran Charlotte wrestling broadcaster Big Bill Ward.
The final taping at WPCQ was on Wednesday night July 1, 1983. On Monday July 6, 1983, Crockett held his first independently produced wrestling taping for TV at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in Greenville SC, utilizing his new TV truck, an operation named NEMO (National Electronic Mobile Operation.)
| BASIC INFORMATION | |
| Call Letters: | WPCQ |
| Channel Number: | 36 |
| Network Affiliate: | NBC |
| Began taping: | August 5, 1981 |
| Ceased taping: | July 1, 1983 |
| Play-by-play Hosst: | MID-ATLANTIC WRESTLING: Bob Caudle WORLD WIDE WRESTLING: Rich landrum, David Crockett EAST COAST WRESTLING: "Big" Bill Ward |
| Color Commentators | MID-ATLANTIC WRESTLING David Crockett, Sandy Scott, Roddy Piper WORLD WIDE WRESTLING Johnny Weaver |
| Ring Announcer: | None (intros done from set) |
| Local Promo Announcers Night Taped: | Rich Landrum, Bill Ward, David Crockett Bill Connell, Dude Walker Wednesday |
| Show Name: | Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling World Wide Wrestling East Coast Wrestling |
Bob Caudle interviews NWA World Champion Ric Flair on the set of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling as co-host Sandy Scott waits off camera.
World Wide Wrestling host David Crockett interviews Ric Flair.
An unidentified wrestler waits for his match in the ring.
The clippings above were found in Johnny Weaver's personal scrapbook when we visited with him in November of 2007. The second part of the article was not included. The article provides some good information about the move from WRAL in Raleigh to WPCQ in Charlotte.
TV Wrestling Keeps Hold on its Fans
By Mark Wolf
In the corner of WPCQ-TV’s (Channel 36) studio, Wahoo McDaniel is joking with fans. A group of teenage girls jeers Sgt. Jacque Goulet, who is watching the preparations through a second-story window. As the floor manager counts down the final seconds to air time, David Crockett adjust his tie and Bob Caudle is trying to find the best place to put the ringside bell just before he says, “Hi wrestling fans. This is Bob Caudle along with David Crockett….”
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling is on the air – actually, on tape – and with its companion show, “Wide World Wrestling,” soon will air on 26 stations in 19 markets. Both hour long programs are taped on a single (very long) day. Producer Jim Crockett, President of Jim Crockett Promotions, routinely arrives at the studio at 10 am and does not leave until 13 hours later.
Wrestling is a venerable television programming staple. In 1948, there were four live network prime-time wrestling shows weekly. Those died within a few years, but syndicated wrestling programs still appear in virtually every television market in the nation. Atlanta’s WTBS (Charlotte Cable 6) brings three hours of weekend wrestling to its large national cable audience.
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling is the oldest syndicated program in the South and has appeared on WBTV (Channel 3) since 1958, when it was televised live from the station’s studio. Since, it has been a weekend fixture (currently 2:30 pm Saturdays). The show is occasionally bounced around the schedule, but its fans seem to find it. In the past year, it pulled a respectable 30 share on WBTV. “Wide World Wrestling” has been on Channel 36 for more than 10 years (now at 5 pm Saturdays). The ratings are lower than “Mid-Atlantic” but “pretty good for us on Saturday afternoons,” says program director Nat Tucker. “I think its audience is very, very loyal.”
Both programs are offered on a barter basis. The stations receive the shows for free and have a few commercial minutes to sell. In exchange, the Crocketts get commercial for their matches.
For the past five years, tapings were anchored at Raleigh’s WRAL-TV, but a crunch on studio time caused by that station’s “P.M. Magazine” and a proposed hour-long newscast meant there was insufficient time for taping the wrestling show.
That is how Charlotte’s WPCQ-TV got to be the new home base.
(Thanks to Peggy Lathan for transcribing the WPCQ newspaper article.)
