BET cancels 106 & Park TV Show

Well, BET is finally sending its most prized stallion to the glue factor.

The network that has been embarrassing black folks for years has announced that it’s canceling its flagship show 106 & Park. The last show airs Dec. 19; whatever’s left of its zombie corpse will become a digital program on BET.com in 2015.

I might give 106 a hard time now, but in its heyday it was awesome. Serving as an urban counterpart to MTV”s TRL in 2000, 106 was a cool showcase of hip-hop and R&B’s top stars.  But as the 2000s rolled along and music descended into free-fall, so did the quality of 106. What started so strongly with hosts Free and, yes, even AJ — who grew on me despite his ratchet Rapunzel braids — devolved into depravity by the time Rocsi and Terrence J took the reigns circa 2006. By then, the show started catering to a younger audience, so I bowed out. My nerves were too bad to handle it.

The last time I watched the show was a couple of years ago, when I was forced to watch it at the barber shop. Ladies, these are the horrors brothers endure just to keep a tight edge-up. At that point, the show was hosted by Benjamin Button Bow Wow (who has to be 47 years old but doesn’t look a day over 11) and a random assortment of children who looked like living cartoon characters. The set even looked like one of those Facebook mobile games you get notifications for 20 times a day. Clearly I was no longer the target demographic.

I can’t say I’ll miss 106 & Park — its glory days were long, long gone. But the show was consistently BET’s No. 1 program. No matter how bad it got, it’s hard to imagine BET without it.

Well, with 106 gone, that clears the slate for more fine programming, like five-year old reruns of The Game and daily airings of Baby Boy. Ugh.

BET needs to do better.