Interesting review
OH LOOK surprise surprise another "bet is ignorant" comment.
O.K. the guy was funny but, folks really need to stop with this "BET is embarrasing the race" meme.
Didn't these silly mofos get the memo that there is a Black President now? Who is on T.V. nearly every day?
Freaking Al Roker is on T.V. everyday. Dyson and/or Smiley are on T.V. nearly every Sunday.
In the face of that you'd have have to be determinely stupid or racist
to take the BET Awards as being representative of anything other than the Black Music Industry.
Aside from the poor production values(due all the M.J stuff having to done at the last second)
I didn't have that muuch of a problem with the show.
Jeff Johnson's show lived and died without a single word from these boogie SOB's.
They don't have the RIGHT to an opinion anymore.
Cmon, Vic. 
BET is WACK and deserves every bit of the criticism it gets! Stop apologizing for this sh*t!
Where's that Black Panther show? Hannibal? American Gangster season 4? A nightly news show?
Oh, they don't have those, but what they do have is bullsh*t reality show's with Tiny and Toya and Frankie and Neffie? Really? That's what people want to see?
And exactly what does Barack Obama have to do with the foolishness BET is trying to pass off as entertainment? A Black president forgives all sins? Please.
If you think that people don't look at the BET awards as being indicative of the race, you're fooling yourself. It's not just a music awards show. Sorry.
They've been producing an awards show for, what, nine years now? And this is the best that they can do? High school production mistakes? They've got Viacom money to spend now. BET should have the same production value and professionalism as anything that VH1 produces. But nope. Why bother? Black people should be accustomed to second and third rate product, right?
Jeff Johnson's show was good. I watched it every week. But they didn't really promote it (like they did with Keisha Cole's and DMX's shows) and tried to jam too much into a thirty-minute format. Who's fault is that?
News and public affairs shows are traditional low earners. Where was the picket line to save Jeff Johnson? There was plenty of effort to get Hot Ghetto Mess off the air. It would have been productive to see that energy harnessed to keep a show. As posters here have noted, a show doesn't even have to be watched to get kept on the air it just has to be marginal and have a vocal following.
And as far as BET's cultura relevence, whats BET actual market share 5%? Less?
When BET's existance actually matters THEN you can talk about its larger impact. The average 30+ white person probably can't even find it on the remote and wouldn't think to look. The dudes who run BET only WISH it mattered like Y'all think it does.
Look. 90 percent of the criticism about BET is based on the frankly silly premise that its some kind of racial showcase.
Viacom never touted it as such and the founder of BET never touted it as such.
So where does this goofy idea come from?
A bunch of Kente Klad wanna be producers who have all these ideas on how BET could do stuff better but never held a camera, shot film or video or pitched a show in thier lives?
Either that or its a cadre of bitter fat chicks who get enraged by having light skinned hotties paraded in front of them on videos. That Sharon Carpenter e-lynch mob awhile told me all I needed to know about the average detractor's grasp of logic.
Know what I like? Consistancy.
If the persons howling about BET had been howling about Flav's Cavalcade 'O Coonery on VH1 I'd respect their position. But they weren't so I don't. I didn't hear about anybody attepting to picket the WB when they had the Waynans Bros on the air.
In my opinion BET is exactly like SPIKE TV maybe with even less of an operating budget.
Hence the heavy reliance on reality shows. They are cheap to produce. When Reg was around he made a push for scripted works but TPTB aren't used to actually spending real money on programming and didn't see any reason to start.
It is the same mentality that brought the world Apache Warrior v. Ninja or whatever the hell that show is.
BET has never had its own version of the Cobert Report, a unique show so sucessful that it actually convinces the station to actually spend money to create more shows like it.
It folks can't even figure that out they really need to not speak.