Debunking Two Prevalent Myths About WWE’s Current Television Product

Introduction: Since purchasing WCW in 2001 and eliminating any real competition in the televised professional wrestling market, WWE has seen its viewership numbers decrease more or less steadily. During that same time frame, WWE’s overarching presentation philosophy has evolved from the Attitude Era that began in the late 90s to the TV-PG Era that coincided with Linda McMahon’s political ambitions. And while the current product has ostensibly been dubbed “the Reality Era” due to shows like Total Divas, WWE still presents its major weekly shows with a TV-PG rating, and if you have ever seen a discussion of the staleness of the current-day WWE programming here on the internet, someone invariably brings up how the TV-PG rating is the reason for it. Almost equally popular is the belief that RAW’s move to a three-hour format is somehow responsible for its frequent doldrums. Considering Linda McMahon apparently will not be running for office again any time soon and the program has remained TV-PG, and a recent report that RAW will remain three hours long through at least the end of WWE’s current rights deal with USA (which runs through 2018), I am going to look at the fallacy in both of these arguments and hopefully point the blame squarely where it belongs – WWE’s writing and production team.

MYTH: TV-PG Rating is Ruining WWE Programming

In my experience, this is probably the most commonly lodged complaint against WWE’s current product, and it is usually made by someone who started watching professional wrestling sometime either just before or during the Attitude Era. And honestly, it is easily the least logical complaint that I think someone could make about WWE’s television programming today. For one thing, most of these people are romanticizing the Attitude Era as the pinnacle of pro wrestling, when that almost certainly is not the case. Wrestling absolutely did enjoy a huge upswing in popularity during that era, and both WWE and WCW were, for various periods in time, able to tap into the pulse of popular culture of the time. That said, if you go back and watch Attitude Era programming without the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, you realize that the programming, especially the racier aspects that would preclude WWE from earning a TV-PG rating, have not held up all that well with the passage of time. Nonsensical angles and storytelling, turns simply to “swerve” the viewer, profanity for the sake of profanity, women treated as little more than objects – in 2015, none of those things are going to help WWE recapture the fans that they have lost since buying WCW, nor will it bring in new adult fans. Even more troubling is the message that those themes would send to a new generation of young fans, an area where even current-era WWE struggles (though that is a topic for an entirely different time).

For comparison, look at the storytelling changes in “regular” serialized dramatic television from the late 90s through today, and then tell me why WWE would be wise to go back to a style of television that is no longer popular and feels very much like a product of its time. For every Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad, or other TV-MA rated show that is popular with a large portion of WWE’s demographic, there is a Doctor Who, The Flash, or (the show that I review for 411) Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that also resonate with the WWE fanbase. Other shows that have large followings of potential crossover fans include Arrow, Supernatural, and Sleepy Hollow, and I think if you toned down the blood of the former and the darker tone of the latter two – two elements that are not frequently utilized by WWE – they would easily drop from a TV-14 rating to match WWE programming.

Regardless of how you feel about those particular shows that I listed, the point remains the same – it is possible to craft compelling episodic television within the confines of a TV-PG rating. There are multiple shows popular with WWE’s target demographic (and a lot of people reading this column, I would wager) who do so on a consistent basis, and there is even one of them under WWE’s umbrella, NXT.

MYTH: WWE Programming Would Be Better If There Was Less of It

When WWE’s main roster programming is compared with the two best televised wrestling shows in North America right now, NXT and Lucha Underground, a frequent argument is that it is actually easier for NXT and Lucha Underground to provide a more consistently high quality weekly product because they are only an hour long, with the most commonly cited example being RAW’s move from two hours to three. But here is the catch – looking back at the last few months of RAWs before the move to three hours reveals that they were filled with a remarkably similar percentage of filler as the RAWs we complain about today. It is not a stretch in the least to say that it feels like a lot more useless video packages and recaps of things that happened fifteen minutes earlier, but in truth, the percentage of essentially disposable content has remained relatively unchanged in spite of RAW’s move to three hours.

And while I can certainly agree with the notion that with six hours of first-run programming each week between RAW, Smackdown, and Superstars and with no offseason, the workload on the WWE creative team is certainly far more intense than that for an hour-long weekly drama (or an hour-long weekly wrestling show, for that matter). That said, WWE knew that they were moving to three hours and committed to do so with USA through 2018, so the onus was (and remains) on WWE to adequate staff their creative team to ensure that they can produce six hours’ worth of compelling content each week. One advantage WWE has over more traditional television programs is that they can do their storytelling in the ring, and increasing the amount of wrestling on each episode of their television shows would not only lighten the load on the creative team, but it would also make a large majority of wrestling fans happy.

Ironically though, during an appearance on “Stone Cold” Steve Austin’s podcast, Vince McMahon said that he was against the idea of “wrestling for wrestling’s sake”, yet so many of the actual matches we see each week have little to no import or long-term ramifications on either the future of the product or the careers of the performers involved.

And that, as I have mentioned multiple times in my own columns and in staff roundtables, is where the problem lies – WWE is so enamored with maintaining their current status quo that it gives the vast majority of the runtime of these shows a feeling of being totally unimportant to the grand scheme of things. And if it seems like the people in charge of the show are unwilling to care about mid- and lower-card acts, then why should the fans? Should the onus of getting over truly fall to guys like Kofi Kingston, Big E, and Xavier Woods, who were put in an unenviable position and have managed to create something that actually resonates with the fans? Or what about performers like Bray Wyatt and Dolph Ziggler, who have repeatedly shown the ability to gain and maintain their popularity with audiences, only to see that popularity squandered in dead-end storylines with no payoff that generally end with them subjugated to the importance of the same handful of Superstars (the Cenas and Ortons of the world)? Even Dean Ambrose, as insufferably lame as he has been since roughly the midway point of his initial feud with Seth Rollins, has managed to remain popular with a significant portion of WWE fans, in spite of being booked with the most watered-down version of the traits that initially made him so popular.

So what could drastically improve WWE programming while maintaining both the current amount of weekly television and a TV-PG rating? In my eyes, WWE needs to look to NXT and to Lucha Underground here. From NXT, focus on booking matches that make sense and build to something and stop booking endless rematches between the same talents that do nothing to get anyone involved over. Actually make use of the entirety of what might be the most talented roster WWE has ever employed. This is where ensuring that road agents like Dean Malenko and Arn Anderson right on down to the newer agents like Jamie Noble and Joey Mercury – these guys have all experienced the various ups and downs of the wrestling industry, they have seen what works and what does not, and, given a greater degree of involvement in the storyline process, they could potentially eliminate a lot of the “wrestling for wrestling’s sake”. And from Lucha Underground, hire writers and producers who have worked not just in comedy or soap opera, as we have seen WWE hire in the past, but ones who have worked on critically acclaimed dramas or popular genre shows. And rather than giving these non-wrestling people carte blanche over what happens on your weekly television programming, make sure they maintain a synergistic relationship with the agents and other backstage people who have cut their teeth in the wrestling business.

Perhaps most importantly, I think, give each show its own creative team and its own production team, so that each show has its own direction and its own voice. Once upon a time, under Paul Heyman’s control, Smackdown was as important as (and arguably better loved than) RAW, and that was because RAW was the sports entertainment show and Smackdown was the professional wrestling show. Each show offered something different for wrestling fans, and by covering more of its fans’ interests with more diverse programming, WWE was able to satisfy the wrestling needs of a larger group of fans. It is a huge reason why NXT feels so much different and more enjoyable than the main roster programming, because it is different than what we get the other six hours of the week. (I’ll admit, it does not hurt that the booking is better and more coherent.) Another huge component that WWE has been in need of for some time now that would become even more important in such a scenario would be a continuity editor (or, realistically, a team of continuity experts). Get a person or group of people whose only job is to make sure that storylines that crossover between shows make logical progressions from show to show and that if two characters were at each other’s throats the last time they interacted on a show, they are not teaming with one another with no issues the next times they cross paths. Recruiting a comic book editor or even someone who serves a similar role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe would likely be the best route for WWE to go to fill these roles, but it is absolutely an area in which they need some help.

So there you have it – my attempt not only at debunking two commonly-used arguments regarding WWE’s current television product as symptoms of a larger, more systematic problem plaguing the company, but also my suggestion as to what WWE could do differently to improve it, while remaining in the constraints of their current television schedule and philosophy. Would it work? Let me know what you think in the comments?

Wyatt Beougher is a lifelong fan of professional wrestling who has been writing for 411 for over three years and currently hosts MMA Fact or Fiction and reviews Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.