Report: USA Network Don't Want More Adult Content On WWE Raw

The December 14 edition of Monday Night Raw drew the lowest ratings in the show's history. The episode only averaged 1.526 million viewers and drew a 0.41 rating in the key 18-49 demographic.

Reports over the last week have noted WWE was unhappy with the ratings and changes are expected to be made to the company's flagship show.

There hadn't been any news of the USA Network's reaction, though, but talkSPORT's Alex McCarthy reported over the weekend that the network was furious and they want more adult content on Raw moving forward.

A source within WWE reportedly told McCarthy: "USA Network are furious. They want more adult content. Not sexy adult, but dark and violent adult."

A conflicting story from Dave Meltzer has since emerged on Wrestling Observer Radio. 

When asked if WWE would be making changes to Raw, Meltzer said: "Yeah. I don't know what they are but I'll know on Tuesday. They got the message loud and clear. How they react to it, I couldn't tell you... Nobody was fooling anyone or trying to make excuses. It was like, 'Yeah, this is bad.' Now, what that means, I have no idea what that means. I have no idea how they are going to change it. 

"The story that the USA Network said that they wanted more dark or adult content, that's not true. That's just not true. But were they happy with the rating? No, of course not. There's an expectation of what Raw's supposed to get and it was well below that expectation. I mean, it's still not a bad number for today's television - 0.41 - but they're not getting paid $265 million a year to do AEW numbers. They're WWE. They're supposed to do higher numbers."