Turner Broadcasting has unloaded its flagging wrestling outfit, World Championship Wrestling, for an undisclosed sum to the New York media company Fusient Media Ventures.
   Turner will retain a minority interest in the WCW, and its shows Monday Nitro Live and WCW Thunder will continue to air on TNT and TBS Superstation, respectively.
    The sale put to rest persistent rumors that the league might be acquired by Vince McMahon, head of the WCW’s main competition, World Wrestling Federation. McMahon was reportedly unable to negotiate a deal to the satisfaction of Viacom, the WWF’s exclusive television partner. Viacom apparently was not enthusiastic about McMahon getting involved with programming for arch-rival Turner’s networks.
    The deal is expected to close within 30-45 days, according to Fusient president Brad Bedol, who will be named CEO of the WCW. Before creating Fusient, Bedol and partner Stephen Greenberg founded the Classic Sports Network, later sold to ESPN.
   Eric Bischoff, who presided over the WCW in its glory days and was brought back last March to bail it out, will remain president of the company.
    The WCW, while still the WWF’s closest competitor in the wrestling world, is barely limping along. In fact, it’s limping backwards—the company lost somewhere between $60 million and $80 million for Turner last year alone.
   The league enjoyed several years of success during the mid-1990s, during which time it actually knocked the WWF off its perch with the help of proven (but aging) talent like Hulk Hogan and "Nature Boy" Ric Flair.
    But since late 1998 the fall has been swift and brutal. WCW’s cable programs and pay-per-view events alike consistently rate way below those of the WWF.
    "I remember in January of 1999 it was clearly a dogfight [between the WCW and the WWF]. The WCW would rate a 4.6, and now they’re doing a fraction of that. They made a mockery of their product. Instead of giving the fans what they wanted, they gave the fans what the writers wanted," says Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
   Fusient saw the WCW’s financial situation as a buying opportunity, and they believe they have the personnel to turn it around.
    "Our goal always was to find undervalued media assets, whatever they may be. We think we’ve assembled a really terrific group of people in our company with backgrounds in sports, cable and entertainment all around," says Tom Lassally, president of Fusient Media Ventures West Coast. Lassally, a former Warner Brothers Studios exec, is the man credited with bringing the WCW to Fusient.
   Meltzer says that Turner Broadcasting and parent Time Warner mismanaged the WCW into the ratings basement.
   "Theoretically, wrestling ought to be within the Time Warner empire. But they kept hiring people to run wrestling who didn’t really understand wrestling. And [TBS president of general entertainment networks] Brad Siegel’s run in charge was not good at all. He made a lot of bad and impatient calls. It was akin to a losing team bringing in a new coach every 11 weeks," says Meltzer.
   Fusient is saying little at this point about what changes it will make.
   "We might cut back on the live events and pay-per-view for a while. It costs a lot to do 200-plus touring shows a year," says Lassally.
   "I think that with any product you can’t make promises," Bedol said in a conference call yesterday morning.
   Bedol will take responsibility for marketing and promotion, while ad sales will continue to be handled by the Turner networks. Bischoff will remain in charge of programming and production.
   Fusient’s Lassally insists that the WCW does not define itself as the WWF’s competitor.
   "I don’t think our goal is to out-WWF the WWF. We’d like to be advertiser-friendly, and we don’t think the way to entertain people is to have more craft and more titillation. They do what they do well, and we’d like to do something slightly different," he says.
   Still, Wrestling Observer’s Meltzer says that the WCW could learn a thing or two about strategy from the WWF.
    "The winning formula for wrestling has always been to constantly bring in new guys and push them over the top. But the WCW didn’t elevate talent. Instead they consistently wrote for ratings week to week."
   Despite the WWF’s strong showing, Meltzer says that as a whole, wrestling is going through a tough period.
    "The WWF is doing a great business, but they’re the only ones. Throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s, there were always alternatives. Now, with so many of the fans it’s WWF or nothing. So there’s really only one product."

-Gabriel Spitzer is a  staff writer for Media Life.

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