So, apparently, I got punk’d. BET Uncut is not returning to the television airwaves (thank God). However, I meant every single word that was said in my blog rant. Even with the revival of a light-hearted prank show, I still have many questions for the programming team at BET. There are many other television shows that your loyal viewers would like to see revived. Especially, some form of news. But, I must say BET, you got me good! Had my blood pressure all up and ready to protest in the streets if need be. Read about BET’s ultimate prank here, courtesy of The Washington Post:
We saw the #ArchThatBackChallenge and thought what better time to let ya’ll know #BETUncut is coming back than NOW!pic.twitter.com/XLAlkNFxYr
— BET (@BET) August 6, 2015
Leave it to BET to usher in the resurrection of the celebrity practical joke show “Punk’d” by making its audience its biggest mark.
That’s right, if you were one of many either celebrating or scratching your heads upon last week’s announcement that BET would be reviving “BET Uncut,” which was basically BET’s after-hours music video equivalent ofSkinemax, well, congratulations. You’ve been punked.
Once a staple of the MTV lineup from 2003 to 2007, “Punk’d” was the show that made Ashton Kutcher a household name and trucker hats a years-long regrettable trend. It what made us laugh with glee as poor Justin Timberlake wondered why the Internal Revenue Service was repossessing his entire life.
BET chose to mark its debut with host DeStorm Power and special guest host Andrew Bachelor by telling viewers that “Uncut” would begin airing Tuesday at 11 p.m. That probably should have set off some alarms, because “Uncut’s” previous witching hour start time of 3 a.m. was what fed its mystique. BET even teased “Uncut’s” return during its lead-in, “Nellyville,” with clips from Nelly’s controversial “Tip Drill” video.
Sure enough, Tuesday, the familiar opening of “Uncut” appeared, before it was rudely — some would say thankfully — interrupted by Bachelor and Power.
It began with a disclaimer from BET superimposed over the image of three scantily clad women with their backs to the camera.
This program is for mature audiences only. It contains material which some viewers may find objectionable or inappropriate for viewing by children under the age of 17.
Viewer discretion is advised.
A few scenes from “Tip Drill” began, interspersed with static interference, before the camera cut to Bachelor and Power sitting in a couple of director’s chairs.
“So ya’ll thought you were going to see ‘BET Uncut?’” Bachelor asked. He and Power pointed at the camera and laughed. “Got ’em!”
“Well, we’re here to tell you that you just got punked,” Power finished.
But, in what may have proven to be the biggest “Punk’d” moment of all, the show that proceeded wasn’t one of new clips, but old ones from when MTV brought the show and Kutcher back in 2012. The first clip Power and Bachelor introduced was one of Drake getting caught in a fake earthquake as he rode in what he thought was part of Vice President Joe Biden’s security detail.
When BET announced last week that it was resurrecting “BET Uncut,” the most notorious show in the network’s history, many wondered what BET executives were thinking. The network eventually pulled the show as it became branded as a cesspool of sexualized misogynoir.
“People might have been complaining about the ‘Tip Drill’ that you saw in regular time programming, but once you saw the ‘Uncut’ version, that was a different conversation,” said hip-hop feminist Joan Morgan, author of ‘When the Chickenheads Come Home to Roost.’ “It was a really strong way, visually — it teetered much too close to pornography.”
For BET to bring back “Uncut,” especially after becoming the home of the annual “Black Girls Rock” awards show, which most recently counted even first lady Michelle Obama as a guest, seemed as Morgan put it, like “one step forward, two steps backward.”
“‘Uncut’ feels like a disappointing step backward for a station that has been really struggling to define itself against decades of pretty legit criticism,” Morgan said Thursday morning.
Using “Uncut” as false bait for “Punk’d” was a risky choice. There was a chance that rather than tuning in out of curiosity, or simply to hate-watch the first new episode, at least part of BET’s audience, namely black women, would purposefully choose to ignore it. That’s probably why BET elected to make a big splash with the announcement, but use the first episode to replay clips from the “Punk’d” of old.
When BET tweeted the “Uncut” news last week, Morgan said her phone began to blow up with texts from friends curious and indignant about just what it was doing, especially since no one watches music videos on regular cable television anymore. That’s what YouTube is for — it totally circumvents the need to show your skin flick video on television at an hour when most normal humans are deep into their R.E.M. cycles.
But, it turned out, the whole thing was just a ruse.
It’s hard to pinpoint who at the network came up with the idea to punk its audience. Was it Power and Bachelor?
“Well, we take all the credit ’cause we’re the hosts, so yeah, let’s just stick with that,” Bachelor said with a laugh.
After a fleeting attempt to revive the “Punk’d” from the era of Murakami Louis Vuittons and Juicy Couture velour track suits in 2012, MTV abandoned its efforts and earlier this year its Viacom partner BET announced it would be retooling the show for the network’s primarily black audience.
The decision to tap Power and Bachelor says a lot about whom BET is hoping to reach. Both men have enormous, young followings on their various social media accounts. It’s not just unique to BET. MTV has been heavily promoting “Todrick,” a new show that follows YouTube star Todrick Hall which debuts Aug. 31. It’s also started airing “Uncommon Sense with Charlamagne,” which features appearances by Kid Fury and Crissle of “The Read.”
Bachelor is a hugely popular Vine star who has parlayed his success there into roles on “Black Jesus” and “The Mindy Project.”
[Andrew Bachelor, the ‘king’ of Vine, is expanding his lucrative empire]
Power, who is supported by one of YouTube’s biggest talent networks, Big Frame, is one of the most recognizable black faces on YouTube, perhaps best known for his rap song that explains how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.
He and Bachelor frequently collaborate together on Vine as well.
Ultimately, even with the freedom the Internet affords, Bachelor and Power wanted to make the transition to more traditional forms of media; the Internet is just the newest launchpad. Bachelor, who seems to have latched his career to a rocket in recent months, has already started a leap from television to film.
Initially, Power said, Bachelor was supposed to be the subject of a prank, and Power was hosting alone.
“I went down to the network and I said, ‘I need somebody that I feed off of that can bring that energy,’” Power said. “And eventually we made him the co-host … so I could have someone to just bounce the comedy ideas and just the energy off of.”
It took some time for Power, who is used to operating on his own, and doing quite well at it, to become accustomed to working with the larger crew that comes with “Punk’d.” On his own, Power told Forbes he was commanding $15,000 to $20,000 in a single month from advertising commissions.
“It’s totally different on so many levels,” Power said. “When you’re doing a Vine or you’re doing a YouTube you have complete control over the idea. But you have to deal with a director and producer and collaborate. And the time is so much different in TV world than it is in Internet world. We knock something out and we just post it pretty much the next day, or within the week. But in TV world, it’s like, ‘well, we’ll be launching in a few months.’ It’s a totally different plan.”
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