WCW Thunder, or simply Thunder, is an American professional wrestling show that was produced by World Championship Wrestling (WCW) which aired on TBS from January 8, 1998 to March 21, 2001. The popularity of WCW in 1996 and 1997 allowed for the creation of a new show, which became WCW Thunder. Thunder was taped on Tuesday nights and then aired on Thursday, a change for WCW as producer Eric Bischoff was very keen on its primary show WCW Monday Nitro being aired live every week. The rights to WCW Thunder now belong to WWE, who purchased WCW properties in 2001. The trademark for "WCW Thunder" was renewed by WWE in 2018. As of November 2019, all 156 episodes of Thunder are available to stream on the WWE Network and Peacock. History Creation The popularity of World Championship Wrestling (WCW)'s primary show, WCW Monday Nitro on TNT, led Ted Turner to create a new show, which would eventually be named Thunder, that would air Thursdays on TBS. According to the Wrestling Observer, WCW originally named the program Thursday Thunder, but dropped "Thursday" from the title to distinguish it from a similarly named program on ESPN and to provide TBS more programming flexibility if they were to move the broadcast to a different day of the week. WCW executive vice-president Eric Bischoff was originally reluctant to produce another two-hour weekly television show for a variety of reasons. First, Time Warner (WCW's parent company) was under a hiring freeze which prevented Bischoff from bringing in additional production people to run the show. Second, he felt WCW did not have enough talent to produce another show and risked overexposing them and making storylines less significant. Third, according to Bischoff, TBS refused to pay the cost of producing Thunder which was between $12 million and $15 million per year. Bischoff eventually decided that he could make the new show work and help pay for it by expanding revenue from increased house show business. Bischoff was also given permission to sign Bret Hart, specifically as a high-profile talent to perform on Thunder. WCW Thunder originally debuted as a live weekly show, but the schedule was changed by Bischoff in August 1998 due to complaints by wrestlers over travel demands. Tapings were expanded to four hours, with the first two hours being broadcast live and the last two hours taped to air the following week. WCW Thunder