6. Our Target Audience Is Children...So Let's Be As Corny As Possible
WWEs target market is young children, women and families; a completely different demographic from the more financially-successful periods of years past. Unfortunately for most everyone, there are a lot of people involved in WWEs decision-making process who think that, because theyre geared towards children, that gives them the permission to present corny, childish and otherwise stupid storylines. The last few years have provided us with a plethora of examples of this delusional mentality: Jinder Mahal charming Santinos cobra, The Bunny character, the Bella twins making corny Flintstones puns, JBL is poopy, the list goes on. The reasoning behind these actions is that theyre so overly childish that children will find them funny. But heres the problem: even children find some of this stuff stupid. Sure, most kids will cheer for John Cena because hes a real-life superhero, but the examples mentioned above are terrible even by kids standards. Kids arent as dumb as WWE think they are, yet they book Seth Rollins as the most gullible person on the planet because they think kids will buy into such an obvious deception. Maybe someday WWE will realize this, and change how they present TV-PG programming. Perhaps they can take a page out of Chikaras book, as theyve been PG for their entire existence and it has worked well for them. After all, being PG doesnt mean appealing to the lowest common denominator; children can enjoy complex, deep and emotional stories just as much as adults. If only WWE could understand that
Alexander Podgorski is a writer for WhatCulture that has been a fan of professional wrestling since he was 8 years old. He loves all kinds of wrestling, from WWE and sports entertainment, to puroresu in Japan.
He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Queen's University in Political Studies and French, and a Master's Degree in Public Administration. He speaks English, French, Polish, a bit of German, and knows some odd words and phrases in half a dozen other languages.
