World Championship Wrestling (1991–2001)
In 1991, Bischoff joined World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as a C-show announcer, recognized by many as “B-dawg on the C-show”, debuting at The Great American Bash. As an announcer, Bischoff reported to producer Tony Schiavone and WCW's Vice President of Broadcasting, Jim Ross. In 1993, after WCW Vice President of Wrestling Operations and marketing Bill Watts resigned from WCW, Bischoff went to TBS executive and WCW President Bill Shaw and WCW Executive Vice President Bob Dhue to apply for the job of Executive Producer. Ross and Schiavone seemed to be the two top candidates, however, Bischoff was hired in Watts's place. Schiavone remained a producer and commentator until WCW's demise, but Ross was granted his release from WCW and went to work for the WWF. Initially, Bischoff and Dhue worked together as partners, but frequently clashed over the direction of WCW.
In 1994, Bischoff was promoted from Executive Producer to Senior Vice President, putting him in charge of everything WCW. Dhue resigned, as did event manager Don Sandefeur and junior vice president Jim Barnett. Bischoff convinced Turner executives to better finance WCW in order to compete with the WWF. He moved WCW production to Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. Hulk Hogan, who was filming a show called Thunder in Paradise at Disney-MGM Studios, was approached by Bischoff and Ric Flair and signed to a contract with WCW. He also invested money in production values and increased the number of WCW pay-per-views (first seven a year, then 10, and then once a month). He also started a weekly live program on TNT, WCW Monday Nitro, that went directly against WWF's flagship Monday Night Raw. Bischoff remained an announcer on Nitro, regularly spoiling Raw results (as the latter show was not always aired live) to boost ratings. This created what became known amongst fans as the Monday Night War, as both WCW and WWF fought for viewers and in the process kick-started a new level of mainstream popularity for pro wrestling. The changes paid off, and in 1995, WCW turned a profit for the first time in WCW's history. By 1997, Bischoff's official job title was President of World Championship Wrestling.
In 1996, Bischoff signed WWF superstar Scott Hall, better known at the time as "Razor Ramon". Two weeks later on Nitro, Hall was joined by Kevin Nash, most previously known as "Diesel" in the WWF, to become "The Outsiders". Bischoff intentionally depicted the duo as WWF rebels who were not under contract to WCW. To avoid legal action by the WWF, Bischoff in a worked interview at The Great American Bash, asked point blank if they worked for the WWF, which both Hall and Nash denied. The Outsiders expanded and became the New World Order (nWo) when perennial fan-favorite Hulk Hogan aligned himself with the Outsiders in July 1996.
The nWo was depicted as a rival company engaging in a "hostile takeover" of WCW. Week to week, the angle grew more complex, with a mixture of main-eventers, mid-carders, executives, referees, managers, and announcers involved in various subplots related to the onscreen "WCW vs nWo" power-struggle. Led by the nWo storyline, WCW overtook the WWF as the number one wrestling promotion in America with Nitro defeating Raw in the ratings by a wide margin for 83 consecutive weeks. During this era, Bischoff moved from his role as commentator and joined the nWo as a manager. His television character, dubbed "Eazy E" by Hall ("Sleazy E" by the WCW commentators), became a dictator and egomaniac as the nWo boss. In the summer of 1998, Bischoff hosted a Tonight Show like segment on WCW programming with Miss Elizabeth. Ted DiBiase has said in shoot interviews that Bischoff originally hired DiBiase to be the spokesperson and financial backer for the nWo, but when the nWo was getting to be a more prominent storyline, Bischoff replaced DiBiase as nWo spokesperson.
When the WWF rebranded their product as "WWF Attitude" and began to focus on new superstars such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and The Rock, and made owner/longtime announcer Vince McMahon into a character, this eventually resulted in a ratings turnaround for WWF. On April 13, 1998, WWF ended WCW's year and a half run on top of the ratings war. Despite losing in the ratings to WWF, WCW continued to post strong ratings, attendance, and PPV buyrates throughout 1998. In 1998, WCW built one of its most popular homegrown superstars in Bill Goldberg, and gave him the WCW World Heavyweight Championship on July 6, 1998, at the Georgia Dome in front of 39,919 people on Nitro.
In late 1998 he feuded with Ric Flair. Bischoff defeated Flair at Starrcade and the next night lost to Flair on Nitro.
In early 1999, Bischoff promoted Kevin Nash to head booker. Despite Goldberg drawing at the box office and doing three shows in December and January that did nearly a $1 million gate, the decision was made to end Goldberg's undefeated streak and put the belt on Nash. On the January 4 Nitro, at the Georgia Dome, Nash dropped the title to Hogan in a match that became known as the Fingerpoke of Doom, and the nWo was rebranded. By March ratings began dropping, and WCW began experiencing an endless streak of ratings losses.
Throughout 1999, Bischoff reverted to focusing on aging WCW stars such as Hogan, Diamond Dallas Page, Randy Savage, Sting, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Nash, Ric Flair, and Sid Vicious. In an effort to improve ratings, WCW also began to focus heavily on several celebrities such as Master P., Chad Brock, Megadeth, Dennis Rodman, and Kiss. One of the last deals Bischoff structured was a deal with the members of the rock band Kiss to have their own wrestling character known as The Kiss Demon.
By late 1999, WCW began losing around $5 million a month. Attendance, PPV buys and ratings were down significantly. On September 10, 1999, the decision was made to relieve Bischoff of power.
On September 10, 1999, Bischoff was relieved of his management position with WCW by Turner Sports chief Harvey Schiller. The job title "President of WCW" was eliminated. He was replaced with WCW Vice President of Strategic Planning Bill Busch, who was named Senior Vice President (handling the creative side of the company with Brad Siegel handling the day-to-day operations). One of Busch's first acts in charge was the additions of former WWF head writer Vince Russo and his colleague Ed Ferrara (both of whom had worked on Raw when the show began to overtake Nitro in the ratings) to head up WCW's creative direction.
In April 2000, Bischoff returned as an on-air character alongside Russo to lead the heel faction The New Blood; Bischoff also worked on writing the shows with Russo during this time. He defeated Terry Funk for the WCW Hardcore Championship on June 6. Bischoff's last on-camera role in WCW was on the June 12, 2000 Nitro. He would exit WCW in July 2000 at Bash at the Beach, when Russo did a worked-shoot promo on Hulk Hogan.
On January 11, 2001, with WCW facing major financial woes, Siegel accepted Bischoff's offer to purchase WCW. Bischoff and Fusient briefly withdrew their offer when the WWF made an inquiry on WCW (due to the terms of a settlement, WWF had a right to bid on WCW's properties, should they ever be up for liquidation). When then-WWF broadcaster Viacom objected (fearing a WWF-owned show on a competing network), the Bischoff-Fusient consortium signed a new letter of intent.
However, the new head of Turner Broadcasting, Jamie Kellner then canceled all WCW programming due to losing money for several years from its television networks. WCW lost $60 million in 2000 alone. Kellner believed that wrestling did not fit the demographics of either TBS or TNT and would not be favorable enough to get the "right" advertisers to buy airtime (even though Thunder was the highest-rated show on TBS at the time). In the book NITRO: The Incredible Rise and Inevitable Collapse of Ted Turner's WCW by Guy Evans, it is said that a key condition in WCW's purchase deal with Fusient was that Fusient wanted control over time slots on the TNT and TBS networks, regardless of whether these slots would show WCW programming or not. This influenced Kellner's decision to ultimately cancel WCW programming. With no network on which to air its programming, WCW was of little value to Fusient, whose offer depended on being able to continue to air WCW programming on the Turner networks. Bischoff stated that "it made absolutely no sense for us to do the deal under those circumstances." With WCW programming canceled (and Viacom subsequently no longer objecting), WCW's key assets (tape library, trademarks, and selected contracts) were purchased by the WWF in March 2001 for a substantially lower price (approximately US$3.5 million) than what had been offered.
