JIM CROCKETT PROMOTIONS ERA 1985-1988

World Championship Wrestling (Saturday Evenings)

This was the "flagship" wrestling program for Crockett Promotions on WTBS. For most of 1985 and 1986 the show was taped on Saturday mornings at the WTBS studios on Techwood Drive in Atlanta. Beginning during the college football season of 1986, it was taped on Sunday mornings because WTBS needed the studio for the "College Football Scoreboard" show. In 1987 and 1988, tapings were moved to Tuesday or Wednesday evenings for periods of time. The program traditionally aired at 6:05 PM ET, but occasionally aired at other times on Saturday evenings.

The program had its origins back in the early 1970s when the NWA Georgia territory wrestling promotion began airing its Atlanta show on the broadcast channel WTCG channel 17. Georgia Championship Wrestling was a ratings juggernaut when WTCG became WTBS and went national as the nation's first "superstation" on cable television.

In 1982, the Georgia promotion changed the name of the program to World Championship Wrestling. The program kept that name throughout the WWF era on WTBS and throughout the Crockett era as well. When the Sunday evening show became a live-to-tape studio show in the fall of 1986, the Saturday evening show's name was changed to World Championship Wrestling - Saturday Edition.

Best of  Championship Wrestling (Sunday Evenings)

Georgia Championship Wrestling's traditional Sunday evening show also had its origins in the mid-1970s. It was a one hour show that featured matches from prior weeks on Georgia Championship Wrestling (and later World Championship Wrestling.) When WTBS became a popular channel on local and regional cable systems across the country in the late 1970s, other territorial promoters would send tapes of their wrestlers from their own TV shows that would air on this show as well, usually featuring stars who would be appearing in Georgia in the future or who were booked in upcoming appearances in Atlanta.

It traditionally aired at 6:05 PM, but like the other programs, it occasionally started at others times, usually between 5:05 PM and 7:05 PM.

The show maintained its name through the WWF era and into the Crockett era, eventually being replaced by the live-to-tape World Championship Wrestling - Sunday Edition  (on September 7, 1986) and the post-produced arena program NWA Main Event (on April 4, 1988.)

Championship Wrestling (Saturday Mornings)

This show was basically a third hour of World Championship Wrestling that aired the following week early on Saturday mornings, traditionally at 9:35 AM, although the time slot evolved from its original start time of  7:35 AM. The show first came about when the WWF gained control of the WTBS wrestling television shows in July of 1984 through a stock acquisition. One of the principle owners of Georgia Championship Wrestling forced out by the change, Ole Anderson, negotiated his own one-hour time slot at 7:35 AM on Saturday mornings called Championship Wrestling from Georgia. That show debuted August 8, 1984.

It continued to air during the WWF's entire tenure on WTBS, but when Jim Crockett Promotions bought McMahon's TV time on WTBS in March of 1985, Crockett gained control of all TV slots on the station through an agreement with Ted Turner.  This included Anderson's early Saturday morning Georgia show, as well as promoter Bill Watt's Mid-South Wrestling show that briefly aired on WTBS Sunday afternoons. Crockett changed the name from Championship Wrestling from Georgia to simply Championship Wrestling.

Over the next four years that Jim Crockett Promotions was on WTBS, the morning time slot would have many different incarnations, including a a highlights show called NWA Superbouts (began May 9, 1987) and a two-week delayed version of the nationally syndicated NWA Pro Wrestling (began April 2, 1988), and eventually returning to the original Championship Wrestling studio format on Sept. 9, 1988.

© Mid-Atlantic Gateway