Al Sharpton Declares Victory for Oscar Boycott as Ratings Fall

Norman Weiss February 29, 2016, 4:18 pm

Al Sharpton declares victory for Oscar boycott as ratings fall

The 2016 Oscars ranked as the second-lowest on record, with 34.3 million tuning in (down from last year’s 36.6 million). In a statement, Rev. Sharpton called the low viewing numbers “heartening to those of us that campaigned around asking citizens to tune out. This is a significant decline and should send a message to the Academy and to movie studio heads. Though clearly we don’t take full credit for the decline, certainly one would have to assume we were effective and part of the decline. And to those that mocked the idea of a tune-out, it seems the joke was on them.”

CBS gets Sarah Shahi to play Nancy Drew

The Fairly Legal and Person of Interest alum will take on the title role on Drew, playing a modern thirtysomething version of the iconic teenage sleuth character. CBS boss Glenn Geller had previously said that the character would be played by a diverse actress. Shahi is of Iranian, Persian and Spanish ancestry.

Oscar producer admits “mistake” in playing off Alejandro G. Iñárritu while he was making a point about diversity

After the ceremony, The Revenant director, who took home the best director award, was ticked off, especially since he was trying to make a point that diversity included Latinos and Asians, not just African-Americans. “I hadn’t even used all my time when they started to play me off,” he said. When asked, producer Reginald Hudlin said, “it was just one mistake in a three and a half hour show.”

CBS renews NCIS for 2 more seasons

With Mark Harmon on board, CBS announced that the procedural will be back for Seasons 14 and 15.

21 reality stars have committed suicide in the past decade

In the wake of Bachelor alum Lex McAllister’s death, the NY Post counted up all the reality stars who have succumbed to ending their lives.

As Chris Rock demonstrated, “Asian jokes are the last frontier in cheap racial humor”

That’s according to Lowen Liu, who adds that the Rock’s Asian joke coupled with Sacha Baron Cohen’s Asian joke “were not just a blip in the night. They were a huge deflation.” PLUS: Media Action Network for Asian Americans co-founder Guy Aoki said “they just reinforced that fear for millions of Asian Americans across the country. They’re basically saying, ‘Yep, we look at you guys as a joke.’”