SNME – Wrestlemania 3
By Scott Keith on 27 July 2014
Hi Scott,
Hope all is well. With the recent uploads of SNME to the network, I noticed something strange. Why on earth, during the awesome March 14, 1987 episode, did they NOT promote WrestleMania 3 at all?? It was network tv and the words Wrestlemania were never uttered. They mentioned things like "Piper is soon retiring," and "one day Hogan will meet Andre one-on-one soon" but they never mentioned the biggest event ever less than two weeks from the air date. I know they taped the show in late-February, but post-production would add all the details. Did NBC not want them promoting outside ppv ventures?
Could be. You also have to keep in mind that PPV was a very different animal at that point, too, with much of the business being closed circuit airings rather than the limited in-home PPV that we think of today. NBC might have considered it competition to their Sunday night schedule? That being said, Wrestlemania III still did a 10% buyrate out of the limited universe available (only about a million people at the time had PPV capability and approximately 100,000 of them ordered the show), which would translate today to roughly 10 million people ordering the show, so whatever their strategy was, it worked.