If you were to make the argument over how the WWE has fundamentally changed TV there might be a lot of people who would stand up and agree with you. Triple H, aka Paul Levesque, would surely be one of them since he is absolutely adamant about how the WWE has changed the landscape of TV just by the simple things it’s done over the years. It’s all in the presentation, the attitude, and the manner in which people now view their favorite shows and what they expect to see happen.
It’s not a matter of expecting to see piledrivers and high-risk maneuvers being used in every action show or loudmouth braggadocio popping off in every debate, but it is about how people have approached the regular programming and how it has changed in so many ways from what it used to be. Even the UFC, which is real whereas WWE is mostly staged, has changed since the fighters almost never used to enter the ring to their own music, preferring to walk down the ramp to the roar of the crowd or something that had been selected for them. WWE has taken a great many innovative steps forward and has raised the bar for regular programming.
Here’s the quote from Triple H:
To me, Raw not only is a show that has lasted that duration, it’s culturally been significant in that it has changed the way that television is viewed. Go back before. You didn’t see politicians walking down the hallway with entrance music playing as if they were about to step into the ring at Madison Square Garden. It has changed the way we see live event television. It has changed the way the NFL is shot, the NBA is shot, the way they do their talent packages, the rollout of their performers onto a stage. You go to an NBA game and you see them come out with pyro and music and end zone celebrations and all of it. It all stems from Monday Night Rawand that showcase. That sort of culturally significantly changed, and over that 25 years has changed along with it, but has significantly changed the landscape of television.
Ever since the Attitude Era in the 1990’s when RAW was just beginning to get really popular the WWE has been pushing forward with new techniques and methods that have vastly changed the landscape of the entertainment industry. One thing that definitely changed things up was the inclusion of guest stars from all around pop culture, with everyone from Bob Barker to Donald Trump to Pee Wee Herman being invited to the show as either a guest or the GM for the night. That’s right, for one night the guest stars got to call the shots so to speak, and as a result things got a bit crazy for a while. At one point Arnold Schwarzenegger came on the show and ‘decked’ Triple H during a big match. Drew Carey, Ronda Rousey, Rampage Jackson, and many others have even made their way onto the show.
RAW has changed things, sometimes for the better.
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