If anyone would operate WWE under TV-14, it’s the company’s current regime – but it won’t be happening any time soon.
News broke on 14 July that the sports entertainment giant was planning to revert to a TV-14 rating for its weekly programming, beginning with that Monday’s broadcast of Raw. SummerSlam, held just a couple of weeks later, was also set to be the first TV-14 premium live event since the 2008 instalment of the event.
However, PWInsider has reported that there are “no current plans” to change the company’s television rating for any of their weekly output of shows. No reason was given, though a sudden change of content style would have certainly appeared strange.
That Vince McMahon’s retirement came just over a week after the news first broke was a good indictment that the move away from the PG Era was indeed underway. The former Chairman and CEO had, in recent decades, shown a strong disliking for anything that wasn’t branded as family-friendly, in turn offputting a certain demographic of fans.
Under the leadership of Stephanie McMahon, Nick Khan, and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque, however, WWE has already undergone a series of sweeping changes, from cut Superstars returning as top stars to the word ‘wrestling‘ being allowed. Thus far, the likes of blood remain a distant memory.
It’s unknown as of yet if they’ll change the rating at all moving forward.