Many fans point to the attitude era as the greatest period of TV for WWE. However, they have since abandoned that in favor of PG across the board for all shows. Yet at the same time they put their own
stars like Kane in movies such as See No Evil which was rated R. So I decided to breakdown why this could be a life sentence.
RAW
The flag ship was once the very star of racy TV. So one would start there to change the tide. However, WWE‘s audience has since fragmented more towards kids and women than in years past. Look no further than WWE Kids Magazine. So to take the highest rated WWE show and risk alienating part of the audience isn’t the best business move. Granted one day that audience might mature while not attracting younger fans in which case there is hope. But that could be several degenerations away.
Smackdown
So why not just make Smackdown the more mature show. Well I’d like to expect… SyFy is owned by NBC Universal and won’t want to take the risk.But in fairness to SyFy WWE fans had the chance to watch ECW on the same channel which was more extreme and they grew tired of it.
Superstars
WGN America is if anything more family friendly than the other WWE channels. Even if it wasn’t WWE seems uninterested in making this show watchable. Simply tossing left over matches not good enough for RAW or Smackdown. When instead they could of given us Raw vs Smackdown matches we couldn’t see anywhere else. That or some mid-card segments and matches.
NXT
Here’s the prefect example of a show that should of been +14. WWE had no TV deal making the show online after a few seasons. You’ve got rookies who want to be fresh and creative. Pair
them with pro’s like The Rated R Superstar Edge among others. But alas WWE wanted to get a TV deal for Tough Enough and saw this as a way to sell USA Network on the show. But given WWE has a deal, I don’t understand why they don’t want to put the X in NXT for the final season.
So we come to the last hope…
WWE Network…or Channel
Sadly it may not be until 2012 or even 2013 that WWE considers +14 TV. But it won’t start with any current show, rather WWE replaying the previous mentioned See No Evil movie. After which WWE will likely begin to convert less tame WWE Originals into TV shows. From there you might see a show like Superstars be reworked after the TV agreement ends. I can’t say I’ll be holding my breath.
Until next week your either Wrestling Edge or against us!
