WCW World Wide - WorldWide in The United Kingdom

WorldWide in The United Kingdom

WCW WorldWide is one of only two American wrestling shows (the other being WWE Sunday Night Heat on Channel 4) to have a regular slot on UK terrestrial television, having appeared on two different over the air networks during its lifetime.

Beginning in 1991, WCW WorldWide was broadcast in the UK on the ITV network originally overnight at 1 or 2 a.m. alongside other U.S. imports such as American Gladiators and America's Top Ten. Late in 1992 however, it moved to a Saturday afternoon slot. The day's football scores would be scrolled across the bottom of the screen as part of ITV's Saturday Sport line up. In late 1995, however, the show was moved back to the late night slot and disappeared from the network.

During July 1999, Worldwide returned to TV in the UK on Channel 5, who broadcast the show at 7pm on Friday evenings, although occasionally the show would be broadcast in a late-night mid-week time-slot instead. These shows were a collection of matches from Nitro, Thunder and WCW Saturday Night, which had taken place five or six weeks before. The announcers were usually Scott Hudson and Larry Zbyszko, who provided dubbed commentary with references aimed at the UK viewers. Due to being moved around the schedules and skipping some weeks, the show continued until May 2001 over a month after being bought by the WWF. As mentioned, WCW was purchased by the World Wrestling Federation, and ceased to produce any more new programming.

Even though the show wasn't broadcast from 1995 until 1999 on British Television in English, it was on the German speaking channel DSF, along with other WCW content not seen anywhere else in the country.

Following the purchase of WCW by the World Wrestling Federation, older versions of WorldWide were repeated on Sky Sports.