Tyler Perry’s OWN network television shows may be derided by critics but they’ve proven very lucrative, according to a report from the New York Daily News.
The drama The Haves and the Have Nots and the sitcom Love Thy Neighbor are the highest-rated programs on the once-fledgling cable network run by media mogul Oprah Winfrey and which is owned by Discovery Communications.
The heavily-hyped Perry shows were launched back in May with an ad campaign that featured Perry as his most infamous character, Madea, and Winfrey in a reprisal of her Oscar-nominated role of Sofia from the 1985 film The Color Purple.
Both shows average just over a million viewers a week, which has helped OWN turn a profit “four months earlier than projected,” according to the Daily News.
“Perry is as much of a genius as Oprah is at printing money,” writes the News‘ Don Kaplan.
Still, despite the big ratings and solid advertising revenue there has been a considerable backlash to the shows too. Not long after the two shows debuted a petition was drafted by self-proclaimed Winfrey fans to get Perry removed from OWN.
“Where it is clear that neither Oprah [n]or Tyler Perry are not [sic] experts on race and racism, they have also refused to utilize feedback from the conscious black community and scholars on racism regarding the damage that Tyler Perry and his brand of entertainment perpetuate against the black community,” read the petition, which called Perry’s work “‘malt liquor’ for the community.”