Eric Bischoff Recalls Dealing With WCW Standards & Practices, Getting Paid During Hiatus

On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff talked about dealing with Turner Broadcasting’s standards and practices while in WCW, his hiatus from the promotion and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On dealing with standards and practices: “Lots. Well, maybe not a lot, because it happened a while ago. But there were a couple. You know, my initial meeting with Terry Tingle, I didn’t even — keep in mind, I had worked for WCW for six or seven years and had never heard of anything called Standards and Practices in Turner Broadcasting. Standards and Practices never had any contact with WCW all the time I was there, either as a talent or executive producer, or vice president, senior vice president, president, whatever. Up until the very end, I had never heard of Standards and Practices as being a part of Turner Broadcasting. Somehow, somebody decided that it was going to be important to introduce me to Terry Tingle. It happened at that big meeting that I told you about before when I got invited down to the area where all the top executives worked. And I walked into this room and there were 15, 16 people sitting around a table that I didn’t even know. And Terry Tingle was one of them. She was introduced to me as the head of Standards and Practices. And the first meeting was just kind of acknowledging each other, and me becoming aware that she even existed.

“But shortly thereafter, I got an email or a phone call from her, one way or the other. And I was advised that going forward, I was going to have to supply scripts to Terry Tingle like 30 days in advance. And my first thought was, ‘We don’t do scripts. We do formats. And I’m happy to supply a format to you. But those formats change throughout the week, sometimes, day of, depending on a number of different variables that can occur. But I’m happy to supply them to you.’ And she wanted them television scripts 30 days in advance. And I had to tell her that we don’t do television scripts. Most networks, all networks have Standards and Practices now. They have to. But television networks and executives in them are really familiar with looking at scripted entertainment, where scripts are written six months in advance, a year in advance in some cases. And yes, they do change and modify along the way. But I had to explain to her that this was kind of live-action. ‘This isn’t Gone with the Wind, Terry. I can’t give you a script that far in advance. It’s just not possible. And if I give you a format, it’s going to have some detail in it, obviously. But there are going to be things that are said in the narrative that are not going to be a part of that script, because it’s live television and people are reacting to what’s going on.’ And she couldn’t understand that at all. And so we started butting heads right off the bat. But the one that really stands out to me is a note that I got back once. We did give her a format and somebody was calling somebody stupid in a promo. Oh, and she flagged that. She says, ‘You can’t refer to someone as stupid, because that’s demeaning.’ As you might expect, I got on the phone with her and said, ‘So you understand the nature of professional wrestling? It’s kind of part of the narrative and part of the product that people degrade each other.’”

On how he was getting paid by WCW during his hiatus: “Every two weeks, I’d get a check in the mail. Just right as rain, on time. I had two and a half years left on my contract when Schiller sent me home. So, I was in no hurry to do much of anything. I was probably still in Wyoming fishing when this took place. So I was in no hurry. I had no need to really go out and try to figure out what I was going to do for my life because I had a little bit of time to figure it out.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.