WWE Raw Reportedly Returning To TV-14 Rating

WWE is reportedly ending the PG Era of its longest-running TV show Monday Night Raw and returning to a TV-14 rating for the first time since 2008.

Mat Men Podcast’s Andrew Zarian originally reported that Raw will revert to the TV-14 rating starting with next week’s episode but later clarified the official date for the change has not been confirmed:

Both Zarian and Fightful’s Sean Ross Sap reported that there have been mixed reactions to this decision within both WWE and USA Network, while Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer (h/t Wrestling Inc) adds that the expected change from a PG rating to a TV-14 rating “is a USA Network decision,” not a call made by WWE.

WWE officially kicked off its PG Era in July 2008, when the company dropped its TV-14 rating in favor of shifting toward a more family-friendly TV product. At the time, the decision was met with widespread criticism from fans who believed that the PG rating would negatively affect the product as it became more geared toward children and families than longtime diehard fans.

To some extent, that’s exactly what happened. The outlandish and over-the-top storylines that dominated WWE during the infamous Attitude Era of the late 1990s and the Ruthless Aggression Era of the early 2000s largely disappeared as WWE transformed from a pro wrestling company to what has become “sports entertainment,” a TV product with in-ring competition serving more as the backdrop of a television show than the forefront of it.

What that accomplished was WWE attracting more family-friendly advertisers and significantly increasing ad revenue, a reality that helped WWE entrench itself as a global entertainment juggernaut, one that topped $1 billion in revenue in 2021. While WWE has benefited financially from the changes, the case could be made that its audience has shrunk significantly over that span. In 2009, Raw was, at times, topping six million viewers. In 2015, WWE’s average Raw audience was still more than 3.7 million viewers. But by 2021? That audience had plummeted to 1.75 million.

As WWE became more attractive to advertisers, it became less alluring to its wrestling-minded fans, which is one of the many reasons why AEW, WWE’s new closest competitor, has thrived as a more sports-centered alternative.

Of course, there have been pros of WWE’s PG era. The corny and unrealistic gimmicks that defined the Attitude Era have largely disappeared. The likes of John Cena, Roman Reigns, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks and a handful of others have grown beyond WWE and become household names in pop culture as well. The match quality in WWE has been top notch during the PG Era too, while women’s wrestling is finally being treated how it should be.

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Many of the drawbacks of the PG Era have been painfully evident over the years, though. Reigns struggled for years largely because the PG Era restrictions turned virtually every top fan favorite into a cookie cutter babyface. Meanwhile, numerous storylines that needed the violence, the edginess, the blood, etc. that were commonplace 25 years ago failed to deliver their intended impact because WWE couldn’t cross that PG line. Likewise, overly scripted promos, expanding Raw to three hours and the overall limitations brought upon by a PG barrier often turned WWE into a cartoonish variety show.

Still, the PG Era obviously worked, at least in some capacity. WWE—despite all of the drama surrounding Vince McMahon and the company in general—is here to stay, and with McMahon likely staying put as well, it’s doubtful that its return to a TV-14 rating will result in any noticeable changes to what fans have been seeing on Raw since 2008. Meltzer says simply that WWE “could incorporate more swearing and profanities when the change to TV-14 happens” but won’t go back to its Attitude Era ways.

As AEW has embraced its role as a WWE alternative and its willingness to have “blood and guys” and everything in between on its TV shows, WWE will simply give itself a little wiggle room by ending the PG Era on Raw. SmackDown is still a TV PG show, and especially with so much crossover between WWE’s two main roster brands this year, it’s highly unlikely that Raw will be vastly different from what WWE does with the blue brand on Friday nights.

Instead, WWE will be able to cross that PG threshold into the TV-14 category if and when it sees fit, perhaps for a major match, a grudge-based storyline or as a last-ditch effort to create some buzz on Monday nights. What fans shouldn’t expect to see is superstars consistently dropping curse words, wrestlers oozing blood during matches or any controversial storyline that will paint WWE in a negative light.

For all intents and purposes, those things—and any other similar actions—are gone for good, and Raw, if and when it returns to TV-14, will likely be such in name only.