Miley Cyrus’ Twerktastic

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Memo to anyone who has suggested heads will roll at MTV over Miley Cyrus’ exuberant twerking of teddy bear and Robin Thicke at Sunday’s VMAs: The VMAs clobbered all competition for the week, with a 5.2 rating in the key 18-49 demo. The closest thing to actual competition faced by Cyrus and her Phallic Foam Finger — who continued to be a hot topic among morning infotainment hosts  days  — was the Robertson clan on A&E’s Duck Dynasty. DD clocked a  4.5 rating. (NBC’s Sunday Night Football, though tops among broadcasters, trailed far behind with a 2.7 rating.) Among all viewers, CBS’ Under The Dome reigned, despite the Time Warner Cable blackout in three of the country’s Top 5 markets, with 10.639 million viewers. That said, Dome didn’t beat Duck Dynasty by that many folks (10.07 million).

While Dome, Duck Dynasty and the  all made the 10-Mil-And-Change Club last week, at the other end of the spectrum, Thursday’s edition of Al Jazeera America’s Real Money With Ali Velshi only scared up about 54,000 viewers — and that was the best showing for any of the news network’s debuting programs. In Al Jazeera America’s defense, it’s currently available in just 40-million-ish homes.
Related: About 10.1M Watch Miley Cyrus Clumsily Come Of Age On VMAs


Loads of TV industry navel lint gazers spent yesterday and today comparing former Disney Channel kid star Cyrus’ twerktastic image-adjusting performance to that of another former Disney Channel kid star, Britney Spears. Back in 2000, Spears also bunched undies nationwide when she too stripped down to an equally flesh-colored get-up and proclaimed her non-Disney-Channel-hood. All of those critics, so far as we can tell, gave an unqualified win to BritBrit in the comparison.  “It was all so yawningly formulaic,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper complained of Cyrus’ performance, noting correctly that MTV is never going to change the gag, and forecasting that next year, if Cyrus still is performing, she’ll get up on the VMA stage and undergo a live colonoscopy. But, as TV has taught us, VMA Hot-Chick status is so fleeting — it takes just a bad breakup, a bad marriage, and one head shave to transform the VMA’s reining Queen of Naughtiness into last season’s dead-eyed X Factor mentor. Which is why it’s so heartening to get word from Disney Channel that they’re working like beavers to churn out the next kid star. Disney Channel reports today it has pulled off its second consecutive summer as cable TV’s No. 1 network among kids 2-11, its fifth consecutive summer as the No. 1 cable network with  kids 6-11, and its 8th summer in a row as the top cable choice with tweens. The VMAs can hardly wait.