Broadcasting Executive Jamie Kellner, who helped to launch both FOX and the now defunct WB Network passed away this weekend according to multiple reports, including Variety.
In the professional wrestling periphery, Kellner is best known as the executive who took over Turner Broadcasting after parent company Time Warner merged with AOL - making the decision to cancel World Championship Wrestling programming, including Monday Nitro on TNT, Thunder on TBS and WCW Saturday Night.
He was very influential for good reasons in Television, but he really is the reason WCW died, no amount of WWE propaganda will change my mind, if he had kept the TV product on a Turner station, Fusient/Bischoff wouldn’t have pulled out.
I mean, was he really influential for good reasons? The two things I know about him are that he killed WCW and he’s responsible for Pinky, Elmyra, and The Brain. Neither speaks well of him.
He worked to bring FOX into existence in the '80s, he helped get Married With Children and The Simpson’s on the air among others. After leaving FOX he helped to create The CW, including shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 7th Heaven, and Felicity, which were almost all big hits in their day. Sure he killed some of the best Cartoons ever, see my avatar… but he was also highly influential in the TV industry long before he killed things I loved. Even towards the end his Acme Group had petitioned the FCC to deny Fox’s renewal of a station in Philly because of their election lies, he wasn’t all bad, he just happened to be the killer of things I liked.
Fuck him for killing WCW…
…but you are correct he gave me Married…with Children and Simpsons, I cannot legally be that mad at the guy.
Huh. There’s a lot there I didn’t know. Thanks!
fox was actually pretty influential in it’s rise, especially though shows like arsenio hall and in living colour. heck, fox and arsenio hall was essentially the reason why bill clinton became president.
i’d argue that the brand itself had been damaged beyond repair by 2001 due to the inmates running the asylum (ie, russo, creative control, poor booking decisions, and the like. attendance was already low as it is, compared to 95-97. i know around that time was about the time i began to check out of wrestling anyway, since i was moving on to university. i honestly don’t know what fusient or bischoff could have done, especially since i have no confidence in bischoff to not just try and repeat the same ideas.
I’d argue so long as they kept one time slot, and I’d have given them 6:05 on Saturday Night, they likely could have pulled through the tough times, maybe never getting back to being huge, but they’d still be around today, IMO. I think TNA proves that a dogshit company from that time period would have been capable of surviving with a financial backer.
I’ll agree Bischoff was seemingly a one trick pony and would have gone to the nWo well again and it would have failed, especially if we assume Turner’s UWC kept paying the big names like Nash and Sting not to work, like they did when WWF bought WCW. I also don’t believe Fusient would have kept him on as President if he continued stinking things up, they were a venture capitalist company after all, meaning they were likely cutthroat bastards.
