6 Ups And 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Oct 30)

Downs...

5. D’oh!

WWE loves to make up terminologies that make it look better. “Sports entertainment” is a made-up phrase that the company has used for years to separate itself from athletics and from regular programming.

But when WWE refers to Raw as the “longest-running weekly episodic television show,” that’s not only a ridiculous term, it’s a false claim. In announcing that Raw was coming up on its 25th anniversary in January, both Stephanie McMahon and Michael Cole claimed that the show had been around longer than any other program, including The Simpsons.

Even Homer Simpson is smart enough to figure out that The Simpsons’ 1989 debut as a program predated Raw’s 1993 unveiling by nearly four years. If we’re talking pure number of episodes, then maybe you’ve got a case there (since Raw is new every week and Simpsons run 22 episodes a year).

But that’s what they said. And they said it twice. If you’re going to make up terms to make yourself look more impressive, at least get the facts right.