One, the move to TV-PG may have started out as something tied to Linda's run to the Senate, but it's taken on a life of its own now. So many sponsors are tied to WWE right now because of that TV-PG rating, that if the WWE were to go back to TV-14, it would cost the company millions of dollars in sponsorship money. After sinking $50M of the family fortune into the campaign, do you think the McMahons are going to risk losing that kind of cash over pleasing a demographic that it's rapidly losing touch with? I don't think so. Two, there's nothing that suggests that Linda won't run again when the other Connecticut seat is up for grabs. So there still might be some political reason to have that rating in place.
Three, and this is the most important one, is the product any worse than it was in the "Kiss My Ass Club" days? I mean, weren't people wholesalely bitching about the company when the content was raunchier? So the content got sterilized and people still bitched about the product in similar voice. Okay, do you think that going back to a raunchier rating will improve things? Again, I don't think so.
Remember, the worst televised wrestling show on the air right now is rated at TV-14, and that's Impact. Conversely, if Chikara ever put televised content out there, you know that it would be rated TV-PG at the very worst and maybe even TV-GA if the ratings board were feeling extra generous about the amounts of violence permissible under their guidelines that day. All in all, it's about the content of the show, the wrestling, the storylines, the promos and the overall package. Intelligent writing, awesome wrestling and compelling storylines do not need to have TV-14 content to be good, and it's entirely possible to have good TV-PG wrestling television. The WWE has proven that sporadically on RAW this year and more consistently on Smackdown.
Besides, going for TV-PG is the smart move in terms of building an audience anyway. The current crop of young males is so steeped in wanting to watch guys beat the crap out of each other for realsies that getting a good portion of them back to wrestling is a daunting task to say the least. Targeting children is the way to go because you get rasa tabula for the most part. You get them in the formative years, and hey, they may be fans for life. The thing about TV-PG programming is that it's not just accessible to young'uns either. It can be accessible for ALL audiences, so maybe you can get those young males back in fold, as well as people of all ages and sexes who like seeing men and women beating the crap out of each other, even if at heart they know it's all pretend anyway.
Pretending that the WWE is going to drop TV-PG is one thing, but pretending that it will improve the product exponentially is completely absurd and laughable. For the people who have been bashing WWE's content, the only thing that will draw them back in for real is if there's a sea change in how they do things in Stamford, and given that they're still the market leader, that's not going to happen. There is going to be more of the same on RAW, Smackdown, Superstars and NXT, and I can't say that I'm disappointed or excited either way. The WWE is what it is, and as long as I get some semblance of a quality in-ring product (and for the most part, I do), then I'm really not going to be all that shaken up by the turn of events.
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