At long last, the PG Era, which started in 2008, is over for WWE fans.
Vince McMahon first made his programming edgier in 1997 when WWE’s ratings were down, and the company was losing the Monday Night War against WCW. WWE shifted towards PG programming in July 2008 after its programming received a TV-PG rating from the TV Parental Guidelines.
WWE did this to market to children and attract more blue-chip sponsors. Once The Rock came back in January and started to use more adult language, it led to others also being able to have more freedom with their language including Cody Rhodes.
Paul Heyman’s WWE Hall of Fame speech was the most glaring example of what talent was able to say. In the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer reported that the PG Era is done.
Meltzer wrote, “It was said to us that the Rock interviews and Heyman promo are considered the official end of the PG era. This isn’t to say that the TV shows will be changing. That is something talked about but no decision has been made.”
Meltzer speculated a decision would be made when Raw goes to Netflix and NXT to CW based on what those partners want.
Meltzer added, “The attempts to keep things PG in the big picture, which had been a big thing to the point of the memo being sent out about it several weeks back, such as in social media or in non-television shows, is now no longer the case.”
