Hey Scott,
Long time reader, second time e-mailer. I've been watching early Raw & Nitros from March 1996 on the Network. One thing I've noticed during the Raw intro is a shot of President Piper slapping Goldust… yet this is in the opening credits weeks before he even showed up. Any guess as to why such an odd edit? It looks like (according to Youtube) that it replaced a shot of someone (Jarrett?) hitting Ahmed Johnson with something (a gold record?) from behind while he was talking to Lawler at ringside.
Also… this is (obviously) from Raw in March of 1996.
http://youtu.be/xuIrP4pDIJY?t=27m14s
Isn't that Lex Luger's WCW theme playing? How'd they get away with that?!?
Regards,
Steven
PS: Is it white and gold, or blue and black?
IT'S FUCKING BLUE AND BLACK! How can anyone possibly see it the other way? FUCK!
Anyway, as to the question, they would do those kinds of weird edits a lot. During the Bill Watts era, they would show a clip of next week's main event in the "next week" portion of the taped show in order to attempt to pop a rating for it. I guess they figured that everyone knew it wasn't live anyway.