Post by Pennyroyal_Tea (admin) on Jan 11, 2004 9:50:26 GMT -5
And now, gather 'round everyone, Uncle Eric is going to tell us the story about how he was thiiiiis close to saving the WCWnic… "When I left WCW in 1999, I was still under contract. They basically told me to go home, relax, and stay away from wrestling (laughs). It's called a Pay or Play, which was a provision in my agreement that says 'We don't have to let you out of your contract as long as we continue to pay you.' And I had like two or two-and-a-half years left on my deal. So I went out, I jumped in my plane. I went to Wyoming and I fished for about three months, had a great time. And… after that time I got a phone call from Turner and they asked me if I would consider coming back. I did, and in short order, I determined that they were more screwed up when I came back than they were when I left in terms of the way the company operated within Time Warner, meaning, my frustration and things leading up to me leaving on September of 1999, despite what the Internet says and what a lot of people who write books like to say. The truth of the matter is, from a financial point of view the company was still doing quite well. We only had one quarter out of 16 consecutive quarters where we didn't show a profit."
Eric continues, "The problem with WCW was that it really didn't fit within the Time Warner profile, meaning a lot of senior executives at the highest levels didn't want the company to be there and didn't support it. When I came back, that situation was a lot worse than when I came left originally. So, I left again, and basically I was honest with Brad Siegel, who I was dealing with at the time. And I said 'Brad, the company is so screwed up, it's never going to work, I can't fix it, no one's going to fix it. Why don't you let me buy it (laughs). And he laughed at me, he thought I was nuts. And I left again, I went home again. And about two months later they called me back and said 'If you're serious and you can raise the money, we'll talk to you.' So, I raised the money. And we had commitments for 63 million dollars from some of the biggest blue chip investment bankers on Wall Street supporting us and some very, very smart people. And we spent about six to eight months going through a process called Due Diligence, where you do all the things you would need to do to buy a company, going through the books and making sure the documents are all in order and all the legal crap that goes along with it. We had a deal in place, a letter of intent had been signed, everything was going fine...
"Now, keep in mind, AOL was merging with Time Warner. And AOL assigned a guy by the name of Jamie Kellner who was the former head of the WB network under Time Warner, they assigned him to take over all of TBS and all of TNT. And the first thing that Jamie Kellner did was sit down and look over all the pending contracts that were on the desk, one of which was obviously ours, it was a big transaction. And the first thing that Jamie Kellner did was he looked at the deal that we had which said that we were going to acquire trademarks, copyrights, video libraries, all the things that Vince acquired, we were going to acquire all of that, and we were going to get a ten-year commitment from TBS to air WCW on their network. Kellner didn't want WCW on the network in any way, shape or form, he was absolutely dead set against wrestling, he didn't care how much money it made or didn't make. So he said 'Fine, you can sell the company to this group but you cannot give them television time, you cannot sell them the television time. Well, once you took the television part out of the deal, it really wasn't worth anything. Without television, that company wasn't worth anything to us. So we walked away from it. Quite frankly, we just walked away and Vince was able to come in and buy it for literally pennies on the dollar, just for the video library really, and copyrights and trademarks." Bischoff says that once Time Warner didn't want wrestling on any of its channels, Viacom already had a deal, and USA and Fox were against wrestling on their stations, there was really nowhere else to go to so the deal was worthless.
Eric is a "never say never" guy but he doesn't see a Vince McMahon vs. Eric Bischoff match down the line in the near future. It wouldn't have the same appeal as it would when he first came in as now he doesn't have the aura of a WCW head anymore; he's Eric Bischoff, Raw's evil GM.
To read the rest of the recap, go to www.impactwrestling.com/content.aspx?snum=206
Eric continues, "The problem with WCW was that it really didn't fit within the Time Warner profile, meaning a lot of senior executives at the highest levels didn't want the company to be there and didn't support it. When I came back, that situation was a lot worse than when I came left originally. So, I left again, and basically I was honest with Brad Siegel, who I was dealing with at the time. And I said 'Brad, the company is so screwed up, it's never going to work, I can't fix it, no one's going to fix it. Why don't you let me buy it (laughs). And he laughed at me, he thought I was nuts. And I left again, I went home again. And about two months later they called me back and said 'If you're serious and you can raise the money, we'll talk to you.' So, I raised the money. And we had commitments for 63 million dollars from some of the biggest blue chip investment bankers on Wall Street supporting us and some very, very smart people. And we spent about six to eight months going through a process called Due Diligence, where you do all the things you would need to do to buy a company, going through the books and making sure the documents are all in order and all the legal crap that goes along with it. We had a deal in place, a letter of intent had been signed, everything was going fine...
"Now, keep in mind, AOL was merging with Time Warner. And AOL assigned a guy by the name of Jamie Kellner who was the former head of the WB network under Time Warner, they assigned him to take over all of TBS and all of TNT. And the first thing that Jamie Kellner did was sit down and look over all the pending contracts that were on the desk, one of which was obviously ours, it was a big transaction. And the first thing that Jamie Kellner did was he looked at the deal that we had which said that we were going to acquire trademarks, copyrights, video libraries, all the things that Vince acquired, we were going to acquire all of that, and we were going to get a ten-year commitment from TBS to air WCW on their network. Kellner didn't want WCW on the network in any way, shape or form, he was absolutely dead set against wrestling, he didn't care how much money it made or didn't make. So he said 'Fine, you can sell the company to this group but you cannot give them television time, you cannot sell them the television time. Well, once you took the television part out of the deal, it really wasn't worth anything. Without television, that company wasn't worth anything to us. So we walked away from it. Quite frankly, we just walked away and Vince was able to come in and buy it for literally pennies on the dollar, just for the video library really, and copyrights and trademarks." Bischoff says that once Time Warner didn't want wrestling on any of its channels, Viacom already had a deal, and USA and Fox were against wrestling on their stations, there was really nowhere else to go to so the deal was worthless.
Eric is a "never say never" guy but he doesn't see a Vince McMahon vs. Eric Bischoff match down the line in the near future. It wouldn't have the same appeal as it would when he first came in as now he doesn't have the aura of a WCW head anymore; he's Eric Bischoff, Raw's evil GM.
To read the rest of the recap, go to www.impactwrestling.com/content.aspx?snum=206