Triple H has answered another major question concerning the WWE Raw on Netflix deal, this time regarding the possibility of commercial breaks.
A new era begins for Raw on January 6th as the Monday night show will present its debut episode on Netflix. With the company entering unchartered territory by moving the show off network TV after nearly 33 years, fans are curious as to what the show will look like given the increased freedom on the streaming platform such as the runtime, any presentation changes and the state of commercials.
With no network pressure to be off the air by 11 pm, Triple H has previously addressed the runtime of Raw and how the show will have more flexibility compared to previous years.
Another common fan question has been commercials and how they will factor into Raw broadcasts, if at all. With Netflix being a subscription-based service, fans are able to watch on demand shows uninterrupted if on a high enough tier. However, with Raw being a live show, commercials are still to be expected.
Triple H Confirms Reduced Commercials, For Now
Appearing on The Press Box, the Chief Content Officer spoke about commercials on Netflix and explained why it was important for the show to have breaks:
“Look, [laughs], my guess on their part would be money is part of this. They’re paying us a lot of money. They’re in the business of making money, so they’ve got to have ad times and they’ve fit to sell things, even though it’s a subscription product. There’s other factors that go into that for them. For us, to some degree, it’s a funny thing.
Sometimes, they tell us, for whatever reason, ‘Hey, you can have the entire first hour commercial-free.’ I know that nobody out there that watches the show, unless they do television, will understand this because they hear this and think, ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing ever.’ Commercial-free live television is incredibly difficult. People don’t understand that.
To be able to go from, this match ends, you gotta get them out of the arena, you gotta go backstage, you gotta go to this other stuff, you gotta be ready to go on every single thing, in real time, in that moment. If something crashes, if somebody gets injured, there’s no place to go. There’s no commercial to go to. There’s no, ‘Hey, we can go to this.’
You can only go to so many backstage segments. If they’re not ready to go, something happens and you gotta get out in the ring, if no one’s ready to go, ‘Alright, just run a package or something.’ It’s incredibly difficult to do. So having those breaks in there to some degree is helpful.”
Continuing, Triple H added that there will be less commercial time on shows compared to what fans have been used to but admitted that it will be a work in progress as they navigate the start of the Netflix era:
“There’s less commercial time. It’s going to be more manageable, at least for now. Anything can change, but at least for now. I also think this will be a work on progress for us. The formatting is slightly different here. How we work with things is slightly different, so it’s gonna take us a minute also to get to where we feel comfortable and we feel smooth getting in and out of everything and going to where we need to go.
But I think it’ll be a better experience for people. It’s just a part of what we do. It makes me laugh whenever people say, ‘There’s so many commercials this week.’ Well, same exact amount of commercials we had last week. I’ll give you that maybe we didn’t do as good of a job of managing the time in between the commercials, but it’s the same amount of commercials. We didn’t change anything. The format’s the same,”
Also in the interview, Triple H elaborated on how profanity would be handled.
H/t to Fightful.