How Did BET Come Out a Winner? It's Easy as A-B-C (Plus MJ)

Cable TV continues to climb broadcast's leg. Sunday's BET-trophy-show-cum-Michael-Jackson-tribute was the week's third most watched program, behind only NBC's "America's Got Talent" and, yes, the unsquashable "NCIS" rerun on CBS. TLC's "Jon & Kate Plus 8" and Disney Channel's "Princess Protection Program" also landed in the week's top 10.

Here's a look at the week's boffo and blighted:

WINNERS

"BET Awards." Days later, people around the globe are still clogging Facebook and Twitter to weigh in on the spectacular awfulness that was BET's Sunday trophy show turned we-had-only-three-days-to-throw-together-a-Michael-Jackson-tribute. One self-appointed critic crowned it the Swine Flu of Awards Ceremonies. And yet, the trophy show clocked the biggest audience this year on any cable network and BET's biggest audience ever: 10.7 million viewers. Plus, the show gained viewers every half-hour from 8 to 11 p.m. Who's to blame? It was last week's most watched program across all of TV among 18-to-34-year-old guys.

"Jon & Kate Plus 8." Remember a lifetime ago -- Monday of last week -- when Jon and Kate Gosselin announced that despite spending their every waking moment thinking about nothing except what's best for their eight adorable moppets, they somehow found time to realize how much they disliked being married to each other? That riveting hour gave BET's Michael Jackson-is-dead-fest a run for its money with 10.6 million viewers. And it still gets to wear the No. 1 Unscripted Series Telecast Ever tiara.

Cable News Networks' Thursday. In the hell brew of media whoredom that began spewing forth when word of Michael Jackson's demise got out, 5 p.m.-ish Eastern time Thursday, CNN leapt from 1.1 million viewers to 4 million, MSNBC jumped from 600,000 viewers to 2 million, and Fox News Channel bounced from 2 million to 3.5 million. Not surprisingly, Larry King, the man the world turns to for dead people, clocked 4 million.

"Hung." If you take the Sunday 10 p.m. unveiling of this new series about a high school gym teacher who decides to put his God-given talent to use as a prostitute, then add in the midnight replay (and hope no one watched it both times -- please), you wind up with the most watched HBO premiere since . . . "John From Cincinnati." And we all know how that series went.

Fox News Channel. FNC thinks it'll have its best year ever, encouraged by second-quarter ratings that landed it in the No. 3 spot among cable nets, with a weekday primetime average of nearly 2.5 million viewers -- behind only USA and TNT. MSNBC is pretty happy, too, having beaten CNN in a quarter for the first time ever, with a weekday primetime average of about 950,000 viewers -- 10 thou ahead of CNN. Meanwhile, CNN hopes the Michael Jackson story never ends, because it's beating the other two nets with the never-ending story.

LOSERS

"Real World Cancun." "Real World" -- so over? Cancun opened Wednesday and only 1.4 million bothered to tune in. That's the franchise's smallest opening audience ever.

"NYC Prep." Apparently, viewers, you like fake prep brats better than the real ones. Only 1.2 million of you watched Bravo's new "actual" gossip girl series. That's about half the audience of CW's "Gossip Girl."

CW. Speaking thereof, broadcast's latest stab at a network attracted under a million viewers on five of six nights last week, and finished with its smallest audience on record, 920,000 viewers. It goes without saying it finished the week dead last among broadcasters, but did you know it also came in behind: Disney Channel, USA, BET, ESPN, TNT, Fox News Channel, TLC, Nick at Nite, CNN, TBS, ABC Family, Discovery, Food Network, FX, A&E, HGTV, Cartoon network, History, Syfy, Tru, Lifetime and AMC?