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[BomberPat]

On the other hand, do we really think that Steve Austin, at the height of his abilities, wouldn't have been able to get over without swearing? It isn't a "Chilly McFreeze" career killer.

The elephant in the room here is, of course, that a PG rating wouldn't have stopped him saying "ass" or an incredibly infrequent "shit" in the first place. It's not like Steve Austin was out there cutting Shane Douglas ECW promos.

[Carbomb]

44 minutes ago, air_raid said:

Does the snowball even start rolling if the King of the Ring speech is "kicked your butt" instead of "ass"? Was his vitriol enough on its own for the character to stand out? Just playing Devil's Advocate, not trying to be an arsehole. The company rhetoric that he exploded with that speech is obvious bollocks, he was still bubbling under until he started calling Bret out, but that undercurrent of "Oooooo" you hear from Milwaukee that night was definitely the start of something, and do the company launch the massive selling classic Austin 3:16 shirt without the Bible-antagonizing curse that gets the phrase traction to begin with? The growth in popularity magnified to the company by the sea of THAT SHIRT in the crowd - is that a factor as 96 rolls into 97 for the company to observe and go "Fuck, we need to run with Austin"? There's a really big tapestry effect to deal with in my eyes if you pull at the thread representing Steve Austin swearing. In my Wrestling Of Future Past mind, if Steve Austin doesn't swear, Nitro is still on the air today.

You make a very fair point. That t-shirt was definitely a huge deal, not just for how many sold, but also as a marketing item - I daresay there'd have been quite a few who got into, or back into, wrestling after asking somebody wearing it what it meant.

That's definitely food for thought. 

[HarmonicGenerator]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

On the other hand, do we really think that Steve Austin, at the height of his abilities, wouldn't have been able to get over without swearing? It isn't a "Chilly McFreeze" career killer.

The elephant in the room here is, of course, that a PG rating wouldn't have stopped him saying "ass" or an incredibly infrequent "shit" in the first place. It's not like Steve Austin was out there cutting Shane Douglas ECW promos.

I was going to ask, what’s the swear limit for PG? Is “ass” fine but “asshole” not? What rating does “bitch” or “shit” or “hell” get you? I know America was usually a bit less lenient than the U.K. for that kind of thing (see that first South Park episode where they were allowed to say “shit”) but are they more relaxed with it now?

Edited February 4, 2019 by HarmonicGenerator

[BomberPat]

It's always been fairly loose, but the general rule is that mild profanity is allowable, and any more sexualised language is not. It's an odd quirk of age ratings in film that the word "fuck" is considered worse when used sexually - "fuck you" might be acceptable in a PG-13, but "I want to fuck you" is an R rating.

But "hell", "damn", "son of a bitch", "ass" and "B.S." - which is really as far as Austin ever took things - all of that is acceptable with a PG rating.

[David]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

The elephant in the room here is, of course, that a PG rating wouldn't have stopped him saying "ass" or an incredibly infrequent "shit" in the first place. It's not like Steve Austin was out there cutting Shane Douglas ECW promos.

For me personally, it wasn't so much the technical by-the-book definition of what constitutes PG rated television, and was more to do with a shift from the PG mindset. I think that's what most people who bemoan the current product are meaning as well, rather than any actual TV company regulation.

It could also be argued that without WCW on their tail the Attitude Era would never have happened, and the company would have simply coasted along as it was. Which is kind of what we're seeing happen now I think.

[Mr Butternut Squash]

And piss. Piss is allowed now but you only hear it from the commentary team. CockPissPatridge.

[BomberPat]

16 minutes ago, David said:

For me personally, it wasn't so much the technical by-the-book definition of what constitutes PG rated television, and was more to do with a shift from the PG mindset. I think that's what most people who bemoan the current product are meaning as well, rather than any actual TV company regulation.

I get your point, and it's key that we're talking about Steve Austin not about, say, The Mountie sticking his middle finger up to the camera, or Rosey with the word "SHIT" on his chest, to look at (chronologically) the opposite ends of them toying with a non-PG world.

The problem is that the product is stale, and that people remember it being exciting when they were kids, and they conflate the two, and assume that the way to make it exciting is for it to be exactly how it was. But we've had nearly 20 years of wrestling - not just WWE, but practically every other American promotion - trying to recapture lightning in a bottle and rehash the Attitude Era, or rehash the Monday Night Wars, or rehash ECW.

The Attitude Era was exciting because it was new, it was fresh, and it was propped up by some of the greatest talents of the generation. The answer to wrestling's woes isn't to do that again, it's to figure out what the next culture shock wrestling needs is, and where it's coming from. And if it was easy as that, we'd all be doing it.

[David]

I just think that wrestling is better when it's a reflection on current society. Back in the mid 90's it was the era of Jerry Springer, Howard Stern and all that shit, wasn't it? Today they could surely try to freshen things up a bit, no? 

I know a lot of people seemed down on it, but borrowing what makes the UFC exciting wouldn't be a bad start. Wrestlers, when announced, always have their weight read out. So why not do a weigh-in and make this more of a factor? It allows for a fan-friendly event the day before a PPV, and they could stream it live on the network.

You get them to stand on a gimmicked scale, have Corey Graves read their weight out on the mic, then after both wrestlers weigh in you get the face-offs. These could help add anticipation to the event the next day, as we've seen in the UFC. 

For particularly heated matches you get some cops and security in to play the part, have Triple H play the part of Dana White standing between them.

The weigh-ins are just a way of ramping up interest in the event, a chance to get the two wrestlers to square off, maybe there's a bit of a fracas, maybe there's no animosity, whatever.

You can have backstage segments where an interviewer speaks to other talent, asking them how they think the main event is going to go down, who's got the advantage etc?

Another thing I'd do is be smarter about backstage segments. 

The shit where the wrestlers are supposed to not know there's a camera on them is ridiculous.

Why not film it and show it as if someone's caught them on a mobile phone and uploaded it to Twitter or something? Someone get's taken out before their match, and the footage is uploaded to social media by a worker backstage or something, make it more believable.

Do more stuff away from the ring. Again, building to a PPV why not put the exceptional editing and presentation abilities they have to work? Do "event countdown" shows, maybe lasting an hour? Show the wrestlers training at their gyms, going about their daily lives before the event, have them talking to the camera as they load their gear into their car before heading to the airport to head to the arena, show them kissing their loved ones goodbye, the nervous looks on the faces of wives, husbands, kids, parents etc as they watch them head off to try and win a title they've been chasing for months or years etc.

Make the matches and the belts important. Have them discuss how winning a world title will change them and their families lives financially forever, all that jazz. 

Let us see who these people are, beyond their painfully scripted rubbish interviews. 

[BomberPat]

I largely agree with you.

The WWE has been successful when it's tapped into the zeitgeist; in the late '90s that was Jerry Springer, South Park, the arse end of grunge, and the general sense of teenage faux rebellion that comes from relative economic prosperity. In the '80s/early '90s, the likes of Hogan and Warrior didn't look out of place alongside He-Man or Arnold Schwarzenegger as muscle-bound idealised male forms. But it's been twenty years since WWE have managed to capture anything like that - and pop culture is so much less focused now that it would be difficult to know where to begin.

I don't think emulating MMA/UFC is necessarily the way forward - I think it's a fool's errand for wrestling to try too hard to ape MMA, because people wanting to watch something that looks like MMA can just as easily watch the real thing - but there are absolutely key points that they should take from MMA, and learn from; though most of them MMA probably took from pro-wrestling in the first place!

Some of the most interesting programming WWE have created in years has been behind the scenes documentaries, it's been that mad post-Royal Rumble episode of RAW when they were snowed in and had to cancel the live show and just did a bunch of replays and sit-down interviews, and it's been NXT toying with different ways of presenting angles outside of the ring. I've talked a lot in the past about using TV as a storytelling tool, of justifying why cameras are there filming this stuff, and of making everything make sense. But they're so stuck with live TV as the business model (and I think that's unavoidable), which means we're stuck with the same kind of angles - whereas the more interesting presentation often goes hand-in-hand with taped TV.

 

Ultimately, what I think we're both talking about is twofold. First is taking advantage of the vast resources available to them - between the Network, YouTube, the WWE app, WWE.com, and a sizable presence on every single social media platform, there's no reason that a worker beating up their opponent before a match should conveniently wait until TV every week. You could get a notification on the WWE app saying, "shocking footage emerges from backstage at a WWE Live Event!", linking you to a YouTube video that shows Brock Lesnar assaulting Seth Rollins. It could be recapped on the Network's "This Week In WWE" before you get to RAW, and by RAW, the announcers are buzzing about something that everyone's already talking about, because it's been allowed to grow organically.

The other is changing up the visual language of WWE (and, for the most part, of pro-wrestling as a whole as everyone else mimics WWE far too closely). It doesn't need to be a "WELCOME TO MONDAY NIGHT RAW!" open from a ringside announce table, it doesn't need to be "joining me now, my guest at this time...", it doesn't need to be wrestlers watching TV at bizarre angles, it doesn't need to be backstage angles where the camera just happens to cut to the authority figure's office two seconds before they start speaking and awkwardly keep rolling for two seconds once they're done. Every time they cut to the announce team to plug the sponsors, talk about what's coming up at the PPV, whatever, does that need to be the same guys at ringside, or could that be a fleshed out version of the pre-show panel, in something more akin to a punditry role? Instead of the authority figure being constantly interrupted in their office mid-show, have them giving "press conference" announcements like how William Regal often does in NXT. Give the TV show a fresh lick of paint, and you're halfway there.

[Mr Butternut Squash]

I wish they never ditched Talking Smack. It’s one of the most interesting things they produced in decades. Incorporating something like that into the main shows would ramp up the ‘sports feel’ immediately. The guys actually came across as human beings on that as well, it felt like an organic way to kickstart feuds.

They need more short - get to the fucking point - interviews too. Guys die on their arse out there every week. That Mustafa Ali pre tape promo from a couple of weeks back was a step in the right direction.

[Loki]

Yes!  NXT regularly shows interviews or announcements that happened earlier in the day or week.  It is SO much more natural than this odd world where nothing happens apart from for 3 hours on a Monday.

[Carbomb]

I definitely think it's worth looking at what comprises modern programming these days, to get an idea of what takes. Certainly, reality TV's various formats are fairly entrenched; perhaps it'd be worth them doing their own worked reality TV segments in a different manner to previous programming? It was one of the few things TNA got right with their segments around the Hogoff era.

EDIT: Fuck it, it's too similar to NXT 1.0.

EDIT 2: Actually, something else TNA did well comes to mind - The Shore. That was an excellent gimmick, tapping directly into something that was big at the time. Adding DJZ as their really annoying DJ playing their entrance music and repeatedly hitting bullhorn sounds at random points was a great touch too. A shame they got rid of Becky Bayless as Cookie - she was quite decent, I thought.

Edited February 4, 2019 by Carbomb

[IANdrewDiceClay]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

The WWE has been successful when it's tapped into the zeitgeist; in the late '90s that was Jerry Springer, South Park, the arse end of grunge, and the general sense of teenage faux rebellion that comes from relative economic prosperity. In the '80s/early '90s, the likes of Hogan and Warrior didn't look out of place alongside He-Man or Arnold Schwarzenegger as muscle-bound idealised male forms. But it's been twenty years since WWE have managed to capture anything like that - and pop culture is so much less focused now that it would be difficult to know where to begin.

Maybe they need to start doing Total Divas like stuff on Raw. Completely change the format, where most of the stuff is happening backstage and instead of "Kourtney and Kim have a bit of a tiff at the end of the show", you've got the matches which follow the storylines. Sounds dreadful for someone like me, but maybe this format Raw have used since 1997 is well past it and to kick start the viewership on the upswing, they need to start doing the shows differently. Not only did the 2 boom periods tap into the zeitgeist, but the cartoon boom and the Attitude era presented wrestling vastly different to what you'd seen before. I've never known a boom period happen over night by keeping everything the same.

[garynysmon]

5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

But "hell", "damn", "son of a bitch", "ass" and "B.S." - which is really as far as Austin ever took things - all of that is acceptable with a PG rating.

 

[Guest]

So, any AEW chat breaking out anytime soon?