"The Game" to overtake Tyler Perry's Sitcom Empire

By TV Maverick
JR Staff Writer

After building a successful film franchise, Tyler Perry branched out into sitcoms in 2006. He financed the first series, "House of Payne," himself and some local television stations picked up the show. The series was popular and TBS decided to work long-term with Tyler Perry.

In 2007, Tyler Perry premiered "House of Payne" on TBS and it became cable's highest-rated original sitcom. Two years later, he premiered another hit with "Meet the Browns." Currently, those shows are the most popular on cable television.

But, now that "The Game" is with BET, the series has surpassed the numbers it made on The CW, a channel with only a small reach. When "The Game" ran syndicated episodes on BET, it was many viewers' first time ever watching the show. Many people had planned to watch the fourth season when it returned on The CW, but that never happened. When it became clear that "The Game" was not coming back, fans pleaded with BET to save the series.

When "The Game" premiered on Tuesday, the viewing audience at 7.7 million set a cable record. With a good plot behind the series and a cliffhanger, ratings are only going to get higher for the show. Tyler Perry has built a cable empire with his TBS sitcoms, but it is only a matter of time before BET and "The Game" begin to bring in regular ratings much higher than that of Tyler Perry and his sitcoms.