wrestling / Columns
Against The Grain 2.28.09: Is “TV-PG” Good for The WWE?
The little ratings symbol in the upper left-hand corner of your TV. Sometimes people notice it. Sometimes people don’t. But when the WWE watching community saw and heard that the little icon was transforming itself from the “more loosed-end and mature” TV-14 to the “more family friendly” TV-PG, everyone there took notice. The complaints I saw and heard ranged from “Great…now there won’t be any hardcore matches” to “It’s stupid that they now had to constantly ‘be careful’ in what they say and do in fear of what the younger viewers are seeing”. Then next, the complaints started doubling when people saw significant changes such as John Cena’s finisher being changed from “The F-U” now to the “Attitude Adjuster” and the banning of future “Bra and Panties” matches. So this is what I have to say about this.
The new rating I believe not only will NOT truly affect the content the company puts on TV, but also in essence will make it better in the long run. First of all, can anyone out there who’s a true-blue hardcore wrestling fan tell me that they’ll truly miss any “Bra and Panties” match-ups? Sure they were occasionally awesome to the male (or female) eye to see scantily-clad women wrestlers go at it in effort to tear each other’s clothes off, but overall they prove to be a blatant excuse for one to take a well-deserved bathroom break during long wrestling viewing. With the name changes like Cena’s finisher and PPV name changes like the former “One Night Stand” to “A Night Of Extreme”, I truly say “WHO CARES”! I know that the “idea” that the company had to change not-so harmless names around in order to get more mainstream attention may get under the skin of regular fans, but honestly if you think about it, it’s an excellent business move. If one has attended a regular WWE event in the last couple of years, you may notice that they are more younger kids (ages 3 – 12) there than a bulk of us older fans (18 – 34). For example, I was recently at the Royal Rumble this year in Detroit and when I was yelling and cheering Edge winning the WWE Title, I saw like 3 or 4 little kids around me with Hardy green wristbands seriously bummed out than Jeff Hardy had lost. In turn, it made me a little bummed out for them! So in order for McMahon to reach more of this main age bracket, he smartly is adjusting the product a LITTLE bit in order to reach more of this now-prominent audience and not to get in trouble with parents complaining of their kids wanting to perform “F-U”s on each other. In our dire economic state right now, the WWE can’t really take any risks with losing any more viewers.
Second, I truly believe that the product will benefit for the better with the new rating because of an increased focus towards a better wrestling in-ring product. God Bless the WWE in the “Attitude Era” because if it wasn’t for it I (and many others) wouldn’t have been so into wrestling today, but one has to admit that the matches out of that time weren’t exactly the greatest of quality. The focus was on the “T&A”, the foul language, and the most amount of crude, but mostly funny, content that they can get away with. So since that time, the company has surprisingly and thankfully put a much better emphasis on good wrestling and not just “potty jokes”. With a TV-PG rating, I think that this will further push this point and will equal in more awesome matches and less distracting, unnecessary skits.
Overall, people shouldn’t get so bend of shape about the rating. They shouldn’t worry that Edge will become the “Rated PG Superstar” or the exclusion of bloody ladder and cage matches. These things I’m pretty sure will still be around because they are mainstays that have made huge impacts on WWE TV. It’s all of the other minor items that are slowly tuning down or getting rid of altogether. If you have special bloody matches every other week, they become not so special anymore and if you have crazy “un-PC” moments happen on a frequent basis, then they don’t become so “un-PC” anymore. Pure proof that should calm everyone down is with the insane act of Randy Orton RKO-ing Stephanie McMahon a couple of weeks ago…POST TV-PG. Again, if a definite “un-PC” act like this, which many fans were claiming would be banned due to the new rating, could occur and be a major part of the main storyline going into Wrestlemania, then I believe that everything will be OK.
Mr. Ken Kennedy. The man. The myth. The crazy voice. Despite the instant popularity that the man initially received on his arrival, the name of Kennedy is strangely now barely even mentioned by the casual wrestling fan whether he’s on TV or not. So I will look into the unfortunate circumstances that have befallen onto the man with the golden mic in two weeks with “The Curious Case of Mr. Kennedy”.
