The PG Era, which began in 2008, has finally ended for WWE fans.
Vince McMahon first made his programming edgier in 1997, when WWE’s ratings were low and the company was losing the Monday Night War to WCW. WWE shifted to PG programming in July 2008, when it received a TV-PG rating from the TV Parental Guidelines.
WWE did this to appeal to children and attract more high-profile sponsors. When The Rock returned in January and began to use more adult language, it allowed others, including Cody Rhodes, to use their language more freely.
Paul Heyman’s WWE Hall of Fame speech was the most obvious example of what talent was capable of saying. Dave Meltzer reported in the most recent edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that the PG Era had come to an end.
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 that when RAW goes to Netflix and NXT goes to CW, a decision will be made based on what those partners want.
Additionally, Meltzer stated, “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.”
