After rumors ofWWEdropping its PG rating when Monday Night Raw comes to Netflix in January, WWE boss Nick Khan has addressed the chance of the dawn of a new Attitude Era for wrestling. Screen Rant’s Joe Deckelmeier was in attendance as WWE and Netflix looked ahead to the launch of their relationship in January.
Appearing as part of a panel at the WWE and Netflix Lunch and Learn event alongside Triple H, Netflix Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria, Netflix Vice President of Non Fiction & Sports Brandon Reigg, Khan fielded questions on the future of WWE in the Netflix era. Despite the added freedom of a streaming platform, he was quick to shoot down rumors of a more adult rating:
“We’re not changing the rating of our programming. So there’s some online chatter about, oh, it’s going to be R rated, or for us all folks like X rated. That’s definitely not happening. So it’s family friendly, multi-generational, advertiser friendly programming. It’s going to stay that way.”
What WWE Remaining Rated For All Means
Rumors circulated particularly after theNetflixlisting for Raw showed a TV-14 rating, with WWE NXT labeled PG, and SmackDown with a MA rating. For the UK listing, Raw came with a 15 rating, SmackDown was 18+, and NXT was 12+.That doesn’t reflect any sort of change of direction in the actual content of the shows, however.
As Netflix’s Bela Bejaria said at the event, the product’s appeal unites multiple audience quadrants, which has been the key to impressively stable ratings over a long period:
“So first, it turns out that my experience of watching wrestling with my family isn’t that unusual. Raw has been a TV PG show for more than 15 years, and they have a huge multi-generational fan base with a roster of stars and exciting drama.”
Netflix isn’t beholden to the same censorship rules as network television, or the same influence from advertisers who have been typically (and understandably) reluctant to appear alongside some of the more adult content from WWE’s past. That obviously could have led to a change in tone for the brand, but the business decision would have to actively weigh up the impact on young audience members, and the spending power of the lucrative family demographic.
Our Take On WWE’s Rating Staying The Same On Netflix
From a business perspective, a shift back to the bloodier, more brazen times of the Attitude Era never made sense. It may still be arguably the most talked about era of wrestling of all time, but that content didn’t exactly match up with the new repeated mantra that WWE is for all. It also wouldn’t fit with some of the more lucrative emerging international marketsWWEhas struck up relationships with. And fundamentally, there’s no trade-off in entertainment to keep things family-friendly.
WWE’s Monday Night Raw will premiere on Netflix at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET on January 6
