The first post for the month of March deals with the last two weeks of February. Here’s the scorecard:
Winners
Tyler Perry. Okay, so Tyler Perry’s TV shows suck. And so does his movies. And yours truly is so not a fan (he’s about as funny as Jim Belushi.) But you have to give him props for donating nearly $100,000 to Pastor Corey Brooks of a local church to get him off a roof of a dilapidated hotel in the Grand Crossing neighborhood after 94 days to raise awareness of violence in Chicago and to get a new community center built. Soak it up Mr. Perry, because this is the only time you’ll ever be listed in this section of The Six Pack.
NBC. This is another item you wouldn’t normally see posted in this section. But the network earned a rare prime-time win in the just-concluded February sweeps thanks to the Super Bowl and the success of The Voice.
Fox and The Daytona 500. Crashes, fires, and unexpected drama – and a rain delay that pushed the race to Monday evening – made for some good TV for The Great American Race. And good news for Fox, too as the network received its best Monday night numbers of the season.
Losers
Rush Limbaugh. Based on what he regularly says about minorities, he would be here just about every week. But calling Susan Blake a “slut” on his nationally syndicated radio show this week just because she disagrees with him on a position is the lowest of the low. Even Mancow wouldn’t go this far. Or would he?
ABC and CW. Want to know what’s wrong with network television? You don’t have to look further than these two networks who are currently developing and casting pilots – for a remake of a show with the same title (Beauty and the Beast) and (almost) the same concept. Both networks’ prime-time ratings performances in the recent February sweeps period (fourth and a distant forty-eighth, respectively) speaks for itself.
Top Model: British Invasion. The season premiere drew only 1.2 million viewers and a 0.5 rating among adults 18-34 -and is down 45 percent year-to-year in the 18-49 demographic. If these numbers get even lower, Tyra Banks & Co. may soon get outdrawn in the ratings by reruns of The Monkees. (RIP Davy Jones.)