Hey kids, gather round–post-Thanksgiving joke time.  What do you call a show that can’t even get the ratings of Knight Rider on a bad day, hosted by a militant lesbian who couldn’t keep an audience paying attention in the first place?

Give up?

Cancelled. And if not now, then probably soon:

Rosie O’Donnell’s live variety special on NBC Wednesday turned out to be a loser not only with critics but with viewers as well. According to Nielsen Media Research, Rosie Live! attracted just 5.04 million viewers in the 8:00 p.m. hour, even fewer viewers than tuned in the previous week for Knight Rider, the usual occupant of the time period — a show that many believe is on the brink of cancellation because of low ratings. An unnamed executive at a rival network told Reuters: “There’s a notion that the climate is right for the [variety show] genre to make a comeback. … I guess we now know what not to do, thanks to Rosie.” By contrast a Barbara Walters Special, in which O’Donnell’s former The View colleague interviewed Barack Obama, attracted 11.65 million viewers at 10:00 p.m.

When the competition is getting lessons on how not to run a variety show (seriously, when they say “I guess we now know what not to do, thanks to Rosie.” it’s a bad sign.) by watching yours, you know the fecal matter has hit the rotary impeller   Might I suggest that the more appropriate concept is, we now know what not to do, and that’s to put ON Rosie in the first place?

But then, I’ll give Rosie some credit here.  The fix was sort of in from the beginning.  First, they put her in an absolute dog of a time slot–if no one was watching Knight Rider to begin with, why would anyone be tuning into its time slot? Second, they put her up against a Barbara Walters Special involving the President-Elect of the United States, history-making Barack Obama.

Your choices for pre-Thanksgiving night viewing on networks are the first black president of the United States on a show with one of the most respected figures in journalism or a variety show featuring the fattest, loudest lesbian on TV.  Hmmm…;that’s a TOUGHIE!

Now, if one of the acts were Rosie gets in a steel cage Thunderdome-style to square off with Donald Trump, I might’ve watched that.  Especially if they guaranteed that the standard Thunderdome rule of two man enter, one man leave would be observed.

Seriously, though…this was probably a bad idea to begin with, and the already-beleaguered networks can’t afford too many more such bad ideas.  The variety show might have been ripe for a comeback, but with this failure hanging over the networks’ heads, it might’ve just been nipped in the bud.

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