Michael Perry on July 15, 2022
WWE fans got very excited when news broke that Raw would be moving from a TV-PG rating to TV-14. The initial report stated that the switch was going to start with the July 18 episode. It now appears as though a communications error internally at USA Network means that change may not happen right away.
Andrew Zarian initially reported that the change to TV-14 would begin with this Monday’s edition of Raw. That was based on an internal memo he obtained that listed the 18th as the date for the change. Nothing has been finalized just yet.
In this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer discussed what he’s learned. USA Network decided to change the rating to TV-14, not WWE. The memo came out early, and the actual date for the transition is unknown.
“Andrew Zarian reported that Raw will change from TV-PG to TV-14 starting with the 7/18 show. There was a memo sent out at the USA Network saying that, but apparently the memo was sent out early and the date itself of the change is not finalized. WWE didn’t confirm the story at press time. Another source in the company said that this looks to be a USA decision and not a WWE decision. The fact it came from a USA internal memo would also indicate that. I don’t think it would be blood, since they have been publicly dead set against that, although they had been in the past and changed due to competition having blood in the 90s.
I strongly don’t see them going back to the demeaning to women storylines and leaving them in their underwear like in the boom period. I absolutely could see them following AEW with more dirty language. In particular, USA was said to “accepting” Lesnar using the word “shitkicking” at just past 8 p.m. this week when they got the script, but then when Lesnar actually said the word, because they were aware in advance, they did a sound edit of the word. We don’t know if this had to do with that or not but the timing is notable and a sound edit of something that was in the script and approved is also notable.”
It looks like the change to TV-14 for WWE Raw might take some time. There has not been an official announcement from the company or the network. It remains to be seen if and when the PG era will come to an end.
What do you think of this story? Let us know in the comments!
July 15, 2022 7:33 am
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