Broadcasting Executive Jamie Kellner, who helped to launch both FOX and the now defunct WB Network passed away this weekend according to multiple reports, including Variety.
In the professional wrestling periphery, Kellner is best known as the executive who took over Turner Broadcasting after parent company Time Warner merged with AOL - making the decision to cancel World Championship Wrestling programming, including Monday Nitro on TNT, Thunder on TBS and WCW Saturday Night.
i’d argue that the brand itself had been damaged beyond repair by 2001 due to the inmates running the asylum (ie, russo, creative control, poor booking decisions, and the like. attendance was already low as it is, compared to 95-97. i know around that time was about the time i began to check out of wrestling anyway, since i was moving on to university. i honestly don’t know what fusient or bischoff could have done, especially since i have no confidence in bischoff to not just try and repeat the same ideas.
I’d argue so long as they kept one time slot, and I’d have given them 6:05 on Saturday Night, they likely could have pulled through the tough times, maybe never getting back to being huge, but they’d still be around today, IMO. I think TNA proves that a dogshit company from that time period would have been capable of surviving with a financial backer.
I’ll agree Bischoff was seemingly a one trick pony and would have gone to the nWo well again and it would have failed, especially if we assume Turner’s UWC kept paying the big names like Nash and Sting not to work, like they did when WWF bought WCW. I also don’t believe Fusient would have kept him on as President if he continued stinking things up, they were a venture capitalist company after all, meaning they were likely cutthroat bastards.