The promotion’s flagship show hasn’t held that rating since its Ruthless Aggression Era.
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A change is coming to WWE Raw starting next Monday.
Andrew Zarian of the Mat Men podcast reported on Thursday that, beginning on July 18, Raw will have a TV-14 rating on USA Network. It will be the first time since 2008 that WWE’s flagship television show hasn’t been rated TV-PG.
Raw was previously rated TV-14 from 1997 to ’08, which included WWE’s Attitude Era and Ruthless Aggression Era. Raw made the change to TV-14 in ’97 as WWE battled WCW during the Monday Night Wars. The change to TV-14 was also made at a time when edgier and more mature programming was gaining popularity.
WWE’s PG Era began in July 2008 with the company moving away from TV-14 in an attempt to market itself as family-friendly programming and attract better sponsors. During the PG Era, the mature storylines that were popular in the Attitude Era became less commonplace and wrestlers were prohibited from bleeding in their matches.
It remains to be seen how noticeable Raw’s shift back to TV-14 will be. Zarian later reported that there’s “hesitation” as to whether the shift is the right move.
In recent years, WWE has criticized its competitor AEW for its use of blood on TV.
“If you look at the gory self-mutilation that bloodied several women in the December 31 [AEW] event on TNT, it quickly becomes clear that these are very different businesses,” WWE said in a statement to the Toronto Star this January. “We had an edgier product in the ‘Attitude’ era and in a 2022 world, we don’t believe that type of dangerous and brutal display is appealing to network partners, sponsors, venues, children or the general public as a whole.”
TV-14 programming contains “some material that many parents would find unsuitable for children under 14 years of age” and may include “intensely suggestive dialogue, strong coarse language, intense sexual situations, or intense violence.”
Raw is one of WWE’s two major weekly TV shows. WWE SmackDown, which airs on Fox every Friday, has been rated TV-PG since the show premiered in 1999.
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