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

Crockett TV Production / Local Promos
Briarbend Driver, Charlotte, NC

Arcadian Vanguard

 

 

The following is a transcript from a brief segment of the popular "Cornette Drive Thru" podcast where Jim Cornette shed light on the process Jim Crockett Promotions went through to duplicate and distribute their TV shows in the 1980s, and also how they inserted the local TV promo segments each week. 

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 gyms 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.

***It absolutely now makes sense 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, earning more 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.

Jay "Dude" Walker Appears on Starrcade 83

WWE Network Screen Grab

We're looking for more information on this fellow appearing with Bob Caudle and Gordon Solie on the Starrcade '83 closed-circuit extravaganza from Thanksgiving night 1983.

His working name on FM radio was Dude Walker. He was a drive-time DJ for G105 FM (WDCG), a top-40 radio powerhouse out of the Raleigh-Durham area in 1983.

Between early matches during the Starrcade '83 closed-circuit telecast, Bob introduced Dude to the audience and asked him what he thought about Ric Flair. Dude said he believed Flair would take the title from Harley Race that night since Flair was in his home area, and indicated that everyone at G105 was behind the Nature Boy.

Dude also briefly hosted some of the local promo interviews for Jim Crockett Promotions that were taped at the makeshift garage studio on Briarbend Drive in Charlotte in the fall of 1983 and through at least mid-1984. But that short stint makes him part of the historical roster of announcers in the Crockett studio era. (Edit: In some 1984 promo segments, wrestlers referred to him as Jay. So possibly his name was Jay Walker.)

We googled Dude Walker and came across several radio personalities with that name, which apparently must have been a thing in radio. Who knew? But none of them were our guy.

If you have any information on Jay/Dude Walker, we'd love to know more about him. You can contact us via the Contact Page on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

Some interesting tidbits about G105 FM and why there may have been a tie-in with Jim Crockett Promotions during Starrcade '83: 

They have had several formats over the decades including country and rock, but became a top-40 station in 1981 and became a 100,000 watt powerhouse in 1982 when they began transmitting on the WRDU-TV tower in Chatham County. 

They were one of the first stations in their market to operate a dual-city license with their primary market being Raleigh-Durham, but also with a special signal going into the Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem market. During this era of the first Starrcade, they were one of the most powerful and popular radio stations in central NC and the Piedmont. 

This may have been why they partnered with JCP to promote the first Starrcade, given their reach and popularity across the immediate area around Greensboro.

They are still around, a top-40 iHeart radio station based out of Raleigh and licensed out of Durham, NC.

If you have any information on Jay/Dude Walker, we'd love to know more about him. You can contact us via the Contact Page on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

Thanks to those who have provided additional information, including Joe DiGiacomo.

An edited version of this article was also posted on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway on January 13, 2021.

Jackie Crockett Steps in Front of the Camera

Fans who attended TV tapings in the arenas for Jim Crockett Promotions and WCW in the 1980s and 1990s became familiar with Jackie Crockett as one of the important men behind the camera.

Not many people realize that for a short period of time in 1985, Jackie stepped in front of the camera, too, hosting selected local promos that were inserted into the syndicated programs such as "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" and "World Wide Wrestling." These segments were taped at the makeshift studio in a garage in the rear of the Crockett offices on Briarbend Drive. 

The above image is from a local promotional segment for the Columbus, Georgia TV market. Jim Crockett's affiliate for the "World Wide Wrestling" show at that time was WRBL-3 in Columbus, with Fred Ward acting as the local promoter on the ground, just as he had been for decades for Georgia Championship Wrestling.

As we build our roster of on-air talent for Jim Crockett Promotions from the 1950s-1980s, we are happy to finally locate this image and add Jackie Crockett to that list. The complete list of on-air talent for all of the various shows and studio locations during the Crockett years can be found on the right-hand side of this website. Click on any name to bring up posts related to that person.

The Local Promos on Briarbend Drive

Magnum T.A. and Tony Schiavone at the Briarbend Drive studio.
(Woody Smith Photo / Retro Charlotte / Charlotte Observer)

One of the studio locations rarely discussed here or anywhere else for that matter is the small makeshift studio on Briarbend Drive in Charlotte. Briarbend Drive is the fabled location of the offices of Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s.  It is also the scene of an infamous angle where the Four Horsemen jumped Dusty Rhodes in a parking lot in the months leading up to Starrcade '86.

But the office was also home to a small studio where the local promotional spots were taped each Tuesday. The spots were inserted into the syndicated "Mid-Atlantic/NWA Pro Wrestling" and "World Wide Wrestling" programs that were sent to markets across the territory, and later across the country.

Earlier, during the years these shows were taped at WRAL in Raleigh and WPCQ in Charlotte, the local promos were taped there in those same studios. But once Crockett moved his TV tapings out into the arenas in July of 1983 with the mobile production unit known as NEMO, they set up the small studio at Briarbend to do the marathon promo sessions there.

Tony Schiavone was the primary host of these promo sessions, but others hosted as well including David Crockett, Jackie Crockett, Big Bill Ward, and others. 

Briarbend Drive

Jim Crockett Promotions Briarbend Drive Office - Photo from the Charlotte Observer May 25, 1987
(Click Photo to Enlarge)

Not many people may realize that the Charlotte office of Jim Crockett Promotions on Briarbend Drive (just off South Blvd.) in Charlotte was also home to a small makeshift studio where the local promotional spots were taped in the mid-1980s.

Prior to this time, the promos were taped at the TV studios in the 1960s and 1970s at WRAL in Raleigh, and then at WPCQ in Charlotte when they moved there in 1981. Sometime in the year or two following, those promotional spots were moved to the Briarbend Drive offices which resulted in cost savings by not having to rent TV studio time at WPCQ-36. Those taping sessions had grown in length, too, as the number of markets where Crockett Promotions aired Tv had grown substantially during that time.

I love this photograph, shot by Mark Sluder, that appeared in an article by Tom Sorensen in the business section of the Charlotte Observer on 5/25/87. You can make out the street sign in the foreground, the intersection of South Boulevard and Briarbend Drive. Also of note is a small trailer with the folded up sections of steel fencing that made up the famous cage matches for Jim Crockett Promotions.

You can also make out the convertable small sports car owned by Dusty Rhodes, the same one you see in the famous angle outside this very building where the Horsemen jumped Dusty Rhodes just seven months earlier in the months leading up to Starrcade '86.