>>17813676>Kevin Nash killed WCWBischoff credits "the beginning of the end" of WCW to five different reasons.
Late 1996
1. TBS/Time Warner merger (he's told that not overnight but down the line the corporate culture is going to change but he wasn't experienced/educated enough to understand this at the time)
Early 1998
2. addition of Thunder
Late 1998
3. internal pressure to cut costs & reallocate budgets
4. advertising people telling him how to produce his show
Early 2000
5. AOL/Time Warner merger
Turner Broadcasting System merged with Time Warner on 16th October 1996 & it made Ted Turner a rich man but he was not diversified which is where AOL came in. AOL also came in because of the dot-com boom. The boom hit, then it burst. The burst of the dot-com bubble hurt the growth and profitability which in turned dragged down the combined company's performance and stock price.
After the merger took place, Ted Turner was still a large stockholder, but not a majority owner. He still was in charge of day-to-day operations of the Turner channels and WCW, but Time Warner had majority ownership over it, so basically any major decisions had to be approved by them. That's why Turner gradually began losing power. Turner still supported wrestling, but Time Warner didn't.
The $360 Billion merger, announced on 10th January 2000 between AOL and Time Warner, is widely viewed as one of the most significant failure of corporate activity in modern times. The merger's collapse was a result not only of the bursting of the dot-com bubble but also of the failings by AOL Time Warner management to ever actually integrate the two companies.
Jamie Kellner was chairman and chief executive officer of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a division of Time Warner which included TBS, TNT, and Cartoon Network. Kellner took over the post in 2001. He got rid of WCW in March 2001 because in his opinion it didn't fit in with the corporate culture of the company.
