Ecw fans come help me out....

[Rich666]

TNN was the network they moved to after Hardcore TV, Cyrus the Virus was a character Heyman came up with to represent the new network always trying to tone down the ECW product. Kind of like what Smackdown did with their Palmer Cannon character, if you remember him, mixed with a bit of Right to Censor (see how many ideas WWE just ripped off from ECW huh? Ironically Stevie Richards was the RTC leader but that's another story).
So basically TNN was supposed to be a toned down version of what was on the Hardcore TV stuff, plus the TNN stuff was seen as much more of an attempt at a mainstream product.

It arguably suffered a lot because of censorship though, TNN last a little over a year before ECW went under for good.
The TNN network completely ***** over ECW by giving it almost no advertising aside from during the actual show advert break, plus they demanded much higher productions values without giving them any extra money. Plus they put WWF on the same network for a while then just cancelled ECW outright.

I mean don't let that put you off watching it of course, just bare in mind that the change over changed a lot of things in the process.

[Rich666]

The oddest story of all is that Vince McMahon was actually help fund ECW at the end, hoping to nab their top stars when the company went under. Largely they did indeed do that with Taz and such, although it wasn't until years later that they actually bothered to do anything with the ECW name.

It depends what you mean by 'extreme' too, sure it had the amazing spectacles of the Taipei deathamatch and the no rope barbed wire match between Sabu and Terry Funk (still my favourite match of all time), but ECW did a lot of stuff.
I'm not specifically meaning you when I say this, but it's an odd revisionist history to think that ECW didn't do silly joke stuff (BWO and such) and only hardcore matches. If you've seen the first Mysterio/Psychosis match in the US or the Eddie/Malenko 2 out of 3 falls just as two examples then you'll know what I mean

WWF largely has ECW to thank for the attitude era, the period that saw the biggest viewing figures for wrestling since the mid 80's or just after the war in the 40's.

[Rich666]

The arguable start of the attitude era was Steve Austin becoming 'Stone Cold' the year he won King of the Ring.
However what I mean is, WWF saw that ECW were changing opinion of what wrestling could or should be so they made the change to a more adult and hardcore style product, featuring a lot of the stuff that ECW had done like ring breaks (Bam Bam & Taz to Big Show) and the crucifix thing (Sandman & Raven to Undertaker).

You mean the storylines in current day WWE? I honestly only watch the PPVs nowadays but I hear that the main shows are getting a lot better. The size of the average WWE wrestler had gone down a lot thankfully (hopefully it will spell a decline in steroid deaths or people under 40).
WWE's NXT is amazingly good from what I watch of it, it's kind of run like ROH in my opinion (which I am also now really into)

[Rich666]

ROH is really worth checking out, even the weekly stuff has been great as I've been watching for about a year or so now.

The general quality of wrestling in WWE has really gone up lately as the 'New Era' wrestlers appear more and more.