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WWE Programming in the US to be rated TV-PG


sek69

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Then again, maybe the whole attempted murder on John Cena should not really be considered PG.

Depends. Wrestling on television has always had this bizarre double standard, where they can get away some objectionable things that most other shows can't (a Samoan jungle savage in 2008!), but they're also handcuffed in a lot more ways. For example: someone gets murdered in every single episode of Monk, in often much more disgusting circumstances than a simple car wreck, and that show is still rated PG. But you're absolutely right, if a wrestling show consistently did that kind of thing, they probably couldn't get away with the same rating. Although such a double standard is unfair (if a guy just verbally threatened in a promo to commit the kind of violent acts which are commonplace on something like The Shield or Law & Order SVU, that wouldn't go over so well) most of it is wrestling's own fault. They still cling to the bizarre old omerta standard of kayfabe, and pretend that its content is real a lot harder than any other fiction television show does. Little things like half the wrestlers still going by their real names, or the shows not having a credits sequence to list the cast and crew, those sort of thing give the impression that this stuff is supposed to be taken more seriously than it really should.
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That reminds me, why don't they do end credits in wrestling anymore? One of the neat little things about WWE 24/7 is seeing the crew lists on both the WWF and NWA shows (Producer: Virgil Runnels!). I mean even if you're pretending that wrestling is real, someone still has to work the camera and they haven't been shy about showing the production truck/crew on TV.

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It wasn't my podcast (the one I tried to do with the same guy never got posted because the audio levels were monumentally messed up before I ended up recording in stereo and found The Levelator), it was Chris Harrington's.

 

But yeah, the ex WWE PA said it was to remind everyone they were expendable.

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That's odd, since the television crew is the one part of the WWE in which I'm almost certain the employees would be part of a union. Media employees are nearly all unionized, and you'd think their organization would have some rules about the workers receiving a fair screen credit.

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Actually it wouldn't surprise me if the ones that worked directly for WWE are non union. I'm almost certain I read somewhere (old WON maybe?) that the only unions WWE deals with are the workers in whatever arena/town they're in that night. I can't imagine any union would allow the near 24/7 workweek WWE employees are expected to maintain.

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I wonder how they manage that? Pretty much every qualified and experienced media professional would already be part of their respective unions. It wouldn't be easy to find people who would be good enough to work a Wrestlemania but still not connected with any union. Especially all those infamous Hollywood writers we keep hearing about, they gotta be with the Writer's Guild. Come to think of it, WCW, ECW, and TNA all did the same thing, no credits. I wonder how wrestling gets away with this.

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They're marks. It is the same way that companies like Amway/Quixtar get away with being a Pyramid Scheme. You get enough people to believe in the dream and they will do shit that no reasonable person would ever put up with.

 

EDIT: I want to elaborate. I don't think they are marks the way that we are marks. We are wrestling marks but not target employees.

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