The Game: BET TV Series Renewed for Season Five

Created by Mara Brock Akil, The Game was cancelled after three seasons on The CW because of low ratings. Then, due to ongoing fan support and positive rerun numbers, BET put the TV show back into production for season four nearly two years later.

In January, the season four premiere drew a record number of viewers with a 3.6 rating in the important 18-49 demographic and 7.68 million viewers. The ratings dropped quite a bit after that but the 13 episodes of season four ended up averaging a very respectable 2.0 rating in the demo and 4.18 million viewers each week.

Interestingly, that’s much better than any of The CW’s current shows. The network’s most successful TV series, The Vampire Diaries, only averages a 1.5 in the 18-49 demo and 3.27 million total viewers.

There seemed to be little question that The Game would be renewed for season five but BET has now made the news official. What’s more, the cable channel has ordered 22 installments for season five, instead of just 13. New episodes of The Game will return in January 2012.

BET’s CEO, Debra Lee, notes that they have been very pleased with the cable channel’s first foray into creating original scripted programming. She believes that the African-American community is starved for good original programming and says that the networks haven’t offered many choices in the past few years.

What do you think? Are you glad to hear The Game will be back? Do you like the new version or do you prefer the shows from the CW years?