Nobody Watched Bomani Jones' New HBO Show
No one likes Bomani Jones and it's insulting to the viewers when a network puts him on air.
On Sunday, Jones debuted his new weekly HBO program, Game Theory. HBO wants the Jones experiment to work so badly that his program airs directly following the top-rated show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, at 11:30 pm ET.
HBO figured at least some of Oliver's viewers would keep the channel on for Jones and that Jones would bring in viewers of his own. Nope.
Oliver drew 664,000 viewers on Sunday, while Game Theory with Bomani Jones fell to 153,000. Jones lost 511,000 of Oliver's 664,000 viewers.
That is a 77% drop. 77%! It's almost impressive to lose that many of your lead-in's viewers and then add virtually none of your own. HBO could have drawn a higher total by airing infomercials or going dark.
Keep in mind, Jones' show is only 30 minutes long, so he did not lose Oliver's audience over the total of a few hours. HBO viewers tuned out as soon as they saw Jones on the screen. Jones is essentially a viewership kryptonite.
Few people in media have failed harder than Bomani Jones has. First, ESPN tried to make him a radio star, but it turns out that Jones is not good on radio. His program drew the lowest ratings in ESPN Radio history. After it quickly lost over 90 affiliates, ESPN canceled Jones' radio show.
Still, Jones' historic failures didn't stop ESPN from shoving this guy down our throats. It soon afterward gave Jones a new TV show with Pablo Torre called High Noon and a contract worth over $2 million a year.
ESPN tried to prop up Jones by having him follow Stephen A. Smith, its biggest star, at noon ET. However, Jones' show often lost around 50% of Smith's average. So ESPN then moved High Noon to 4 p.m., thinking it would rate better in a block with PTI, the network's highest-rated program. And, you guessed it, Jones failed there too.
In 2020, ESPN had to cancel High Noon altogether after it often failed to rank among cable's top 150 programs. And though Jones was the obvious reason for this failure as well, he publicly blamed co-host Torre for the show's flop.
"We did not have chemistry between me and Pablo," Jones told GQ in an agent-pitched puff piece.
Perhaps Jones didn't have chemistry with Torre. Who could have chemistry with Bomani Jones? But how does Jones justify his blunders as a solo radio and TV host? Hopefully, his time on HBO will force him to answer that question.
You might ask yourself what kind of material this guy has on his executives. Photos? Rumors? We can't say for sure. Yet whatever it is, he probably doesn't need it anyway. See, Jones has risen the ranks by calling white people racist. Jones has even recently said that white people are the problem in the NFL, in his life and in America.
"I just don't know why people try to make this far more complex than it is," Jones said. "What's the problem? White people."
Meanwhile, media executives -- who are mostly white and mostly cowards -- want to prove they are not racist so that they can survive. They think promoting a host like Jones who has an anti-white fetish will help them in that endeavor. So as far as they're concerned, Jones can keep failing for well over a million dollars per year. That's a heckuva lot cheaper than defending themselves against accusations of racism and any attending lawsuits.
Jones has a rather racist grift going on. Quite a gig, if you can get it.
It will be interesting to see how low Jones can sink at HBO before the service has no choice but to cut him. I'm betting low.
How do you draw just 153,000 viewers after a week of mass promotion from both HBO and ESPN? As I said, Bomani Jones' failures are almost impressive.