Cancellation
The show lasted until 1972. WIIC-TV's new GM David Chase did not think pro wrestling helped the station's image as a news source. He decided to cancel the show, which had once been the station's top rated show. The ratings had declined because wrestling had lost popularity in Pittsburgh, with some Civic Arena shows drawing fewer than 3,000 fans. The fact that Bruno Sammartino was no longer champion and was wrestling on a more limited schedule had a lot to do with this decline. A time change to a 4:30 start also caused some audience erosion. Around this time the Pittsburgh promotional office, sold by Newton Tattrie (Geeto Mongol) to a Buffalo-based promotion, struggled to remain an independent promotion. Studio Wrestling switched to WPGH-TV channel 53 with the shows being taped in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1974, the show went off the air and was replaced by the WWWF's syndicated program. The WWWF (today the WWE) was able to claim Pittsburgh as part of its own since it was part of the National Wrestling Alliance at the time and Studio Wrestling was independent of the NWA.
Because of budget and storage concerns, weekly "reference" tapes from the live show were not saved. WIIC-TV re-used all tapes containing its original programming such as Studio Wrestling and Chiller Theatre . Videos of these programs are now very rare.
The Studio Wrestling theme song was "El Capitan" by John Philip Sousa.
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Chiller Theatre, or Chiller Theater, was a late-night horror and science fiction movie program on WIIC/WPXI, Channel 11, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It aired from September 14, 1963 to January 1, 1984. It was hosted by Bill Cardille, known to fans as "Chilly Billy". It was a Saturday night tradition for two generations of Pittsburghers. Two films were shown, one starting at 11:30 p.m. and the second starting at about 1:00 a.m. In between films, and at random times during the films, breaks were taken for skits such as reports from the "PSS"; in these skits, Bill Cardille would go into another part of the WIIC studios and pretend he was broadcasting from the (nonexistent) Pittsburgh Subway System. Other characters included Captain Bad, Maurice the Matchmaker, and Mr. Magnificent. Cardille and WIIC publicist Robert Willis wrote the skits and sometimes Channel 11 staffers were enlisted to play bit parts. At the end of the show, Cardille would sit on a stool and banter with the studio crew.
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