The Ginger Chronicles Ep 20 - The Monday Night Wars, WWF / WWE, ECW and WCW Broadcast Wars / Ratings Wars
We talk about the wrestling wars of the late 90s between WWF/WWE and WCW The Monday Night Wars were a period of mainstream televised American professional wrestling in which the World Wrestling Federation's (WWF, now WWE) Monday Night Raw and World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) Monday Nitro were broadcast opposite each other in a battle for Nielsen ratings each week. The ratings war lasted from September 4, 1995 to March 26, 2001. The rating war was part of a larger overall struggle between the two companies, originating in personal animosity between WWF owner Vince McMahon and WCW owner Ted Turner. The rivalry between the companies steadily escalated throughout the 1990s to include the use of cutthroat tactics and the defections of employees between the two companies. Throughout the wars, the WWF and WCW would both adopt different concepts and narrative techniques innovated by Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW); meanwhile, both companies would establish both formal and informal partnerships with the company, with ECW performers either appearing on WWF and WCW shows while still under contract, or outright leaving ECW to work for one of the other two promotions. While WCW was the dominant promotion for much of the mid-1990s, a variety of factors coalesced to turn the tide in the WWF's favor at the end of the decade, including a radical rebranding of their formerly family-friendly product to highly sexualized and violent shows geared towards older teens and adults. WCW ultimately ran into financial difficulties as a result of the amount of money they had promised wrestlers during a hiring binge in the early and middle part of the decade, which had been aimed at acquiring large portions of the WWF's talent roster. Despite efforts to salvage the company, it was ultimately sold to Vince McMahon, ending the Monday Night Wars. In retrospect, wrestling commentators have come to see the era of the Monday Night Wars as the golden age of wrestling, with the feud between the two companies bringing out their best quality product both in terms of creativity and the performances of their wrestlers.
