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WWE, Inc. (NYSE: WWE) is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales. It is currently the largest professional wrestling company in the world, reaching 13 million viewers in the U.S. and broadcasting its shows in 30 languages to more than 145 countries. It promotes under two brands, known as Raw and SmackDown.
Vince McMahon is the majority owner, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. Together with his wife Linda McMahon, and their children Shane McMahon and Stephanie McMahon-Levesque (WWE Executive Vice President of Talent and Creative Writing), the McMahons hold approximately 70% of WWE's economic interest and 96% of the voting power in the company. The company's headquarters are located in Stamford, Connecticut with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, and Mumbai.
WWE holds an extensive library of videos, representing a significant portion of the visual history of professional wrestling. The company began as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1952, which promoted under the banner of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) and later the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 1982, it was sold to the same family's Titan Sports company, which later changed its name to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, before finally becoming World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002, and simplified to "WWE" in 2011.
WWE SmackDown is a sports entertainment television program for WWE. As of 2010[update] it airs on Syfy in the United States as WWE Friday Night SmackDown. The show's name is also used to refer to the SmackDown brand, in which WWE employees are assigned to work and perform on that program; the other program and brand currently being Raw. It is currently the only television broadcast for the SmackDown brand, though at one point WWE Velocity also featured SmackDown branded wrestling.
From its launch in 1999, SmackDown broadcast on Thursday nights, but on September 9, 2005, the show moved to Friday nights. The show originally debuted in the United States on the UPN television network on April 29, 1999, but after the merger of UPN and the WB, SmackDown began airing on The CW in 2006. The show remained on the CW network for two years until it was announced that it would move to MyNetworkTV in October 2008.[4][5] SmackDown moved to Syfy on October 1, 2010.[6][7]
Due to time differences, SmackDown premieres a few hours earlier in Ireland and UK and a day earlier in Australia, India and Philippines than the United States.
Starting as WWF Monday Night Raw, the program first started on January 11, 1993 on the USA Network for one hour. The original Raw broke new ground in televised professional wrestling. Traditionally, wrestling shows were taped on sound stages with small viewers or at big arena shows. The Raw formula was very different than that of its predecessor, Prime Time Wrestling. Instead of taped matches, with studio voice overs and taped chat, Raw was a show shot to a live viewers, with angles as they happened. The first episode had Yokozuna winning against Koko B. Ware, The Steiner Brothers winning against The Executioners, WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels winning against Max Moon and The Undertaker winning against Damien Demento. The show also featured an interview with Razor Ramon.
Raw came from the Grand Ballroom at Manhattan Center Studios, a small New York City theater and played live each week. The combination of an intimate venue and live action proved highly successful. However, the weekly live schedule proved to be a financial drain on the WWF, and taped shows began airing every other week. From early 1994 to September 1999, Raw was shown live on one Monday and then the next day (Tuesday) next Monday's Raw was taped. This meant that Raw was live one week and taped the next.
The storylines and characters during the early years of Raw still had a healthy dose of the old Federation "gimmick-heavy" style. For example, there were moments such as Irwin R. Schyster tearing up Tatanka's headdress, the different "Undertaker sightings" (during the Undertaker vs. Undertaker storyline, leading up to SummerSlam 1994); and characters like Duke "The Dumpster" Droese, Doink the Clown, or Thurman "Sparky" Plugg.
Raw was also one of a kind, in which they covered the unexpected, exciting moments, a prelude to the "Attitude Era", in which it coined Raw as "Uncut, Uncensored, Uncooked." Some of those moments are Razor Ramon losing a match unexpectedly to Sean "The 1-2-3 Kid" Waltman, who was later known as X-Pac, Marty Jannetty beating Shawn Michaels to win the WWF Intercontinental Championship, and Raw was the first WWF television program of any kind to show footage of Lex Luger bodyslamming Yokozuna at the USS Intrepid.
The first hosts of Raw were Vince McMahon, Rob Bartlett and "Macho Man" Randy Savage. Sean Mooney conducted the interviews and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan also helped contribute. In March 1993, Rob Bartlett was dropped from the broadcasting team and was replaced by Bobby Heenan. Then on December 6, 1993, Gorilla Monsoon kicked Bobby Heenan out of the WWF forever. In reality, this was a storyline between Monsoon and his close friend Heenan, who decided to leave the World Wrestling Federation in order to lighten his travel schedule and because he did not want to take a 50% paycut. After about a year, Raw moved out of the Manhattan Center and traveled to various regular Federation venues in the United States.
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