WCW was dying the moment Gerald Levin met with Steve Case and decided to not only merge with a dotcom when you built one of the largest media conglomerates, but decided to give them operational control of your new empire. They lost over $100 billion.
It was messed up by March of 2000 when the Dot Com bubble burst.
They overvalued the Internet, they basically thought the Internet was going to do the business it does now where e-commerce is huge... back in the late 90s/early 2000s, they basically thought people would shop in 2000 the way they would eventually in 2020.
They were highly mistaken, hence why we had these a bunch of sites like pets.com, they ACTUALLY thought people would use that on the regular in 2000.
LOL
Most people didn’t even know what the Internet was exactly in the late 90s and early 2000s, and they thought it was taking over??
When they realized this many companies went out of business, and the ones that survived had to slowly build.
E-commerence didn’t get noticed by most until early 2010’s and didn’t get over until 15 years later in the mid 2010’s.
They were far off.
it’s funny too because 2001/2002 is when Broadband starts to take off and America Online/dial up starts to get decline. Add that to the dial up alternatives getting big in the early 2000s like Netze
You KNOW they messed up when Time Warner started promoting Roadrunner over AOL.
I wonder if this is the reason why my family was automatically updated to digital cable/1000 channel cable in 2002 where you could buy ppv with the remote and had on demand,
because prior to this we had regular analog 99 channel Cable with Time Warner where you had to call to buy ppvs.
America Online got huge and everyone started knowing about in 1999, but it wasnt smart for a company with less than 5 years success to merge with Time Warner.
The biggest media conglomerate basically gave a company that basically started getting over in 1997/1998 and blew up in 1999 control.
That is nonsensical, WHAT was the logic behind this?
People claim Time Warner sold WCW because it was losing money, I call bullshit, because they kept the Atlanta Braves which lost 100+ million dollars, and they were eager to sell it Before the merger.
it seems like it was a portfolio polishing for the merger and stockholders because Wrestling was lowbrow.
There can be no other explanation, because if they sold it they could still get ratings from the shows on their networks and it would be a complete gain as they wouldn’t pay for TV rights... yet they cancelled Nitro and Thunder DESPITE it being advantageous to them, no cost to them, because they didn’t want to have any wrestling, WCW OR WWF, it didn’t matter that WCW despite having half the WWF viewers(since they were booming from the Rock’s popularity of the late 90s/early 2000s) was still topping cable charts, and the highest rated show on TNT and TBS.
WWF bought WCW with no questions or FCC involved, making it a monopoly which is anti-capitalist.
HOW was there no anti trust lawsuits.
Sorry but your post has sparked interest, wish you made a thread on this.
