A few notes about this clip from 1977, if you please.
First, this was before Channel 10 became WTSP – a name change that would take place the following year in September of 1978. Back then, Channel 10 was not a CBS station as it is now – but an ABC station, which it was up until the “Big Switch” of 1994.
Secondly, and this is mind-boggling to think about these days – one of Channel 10’s popular shows in the mid-1970’s was their wrestling show that aired Sundays at 1pm, often airing in place of whatever news or sports programs ABC had. The big professional circuit of note of that era and area, Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF), had two locally televised shows in the Tampa Bay market: one would air Saturdays at 7pm on WTOG, Channel 44, and would stay there until the circuit’s demise in 1987.
That show would host matches from the Sportatorium in Tampa where the top talent would be featured against lesser-known grapplers usually there to lose, although that didn’t always happen – and the show was basically an “infomercial” for upcoming cards in the various arenas in Florida, with scripted “angles” taking place on TV so that fans had added incentive to go to the shows. Tampa had a card every week at the Ft. Homer Hesterly Armory, one of many stops during the course of a given week. On most Saturdays, additional cards would be held at either the Lakeland Civic Center, the Bayfront Center in St. Pete, or Sarasota’s Robarts Arena.
The “second show” that Channel 10 had often used different formats and would often air on different channels in that era. For a brief while around 1980, WFLA aired it on Friday nights after Johnny Carson – then WTOG would air the “B-show” on Sundays at 7pm. Sometimes it would just be a replay of the Saturday edition, sometimes it would be repackaged, and other times Gordon Solie would interview someone in the wrestling world for a half-hour or so, then show highlights the rest of the way.
Here, Gordon’s interviewing one Andre Roussimoff, better known to the world as merely Andre The Giant – one of most in-demand performers of the era.
A Slice Of Big Pauly 