The End Of An Era On 106 & Park...

After five years, the end has come for Free & AJ on BET's 106 & Park. Thursday's show was the final live show to be hosted by either of them. The show will continue but with new hosts at the helm. Based on what happened on Thursday's show, it seemed like this ending didn't turn out the way it should have. Free, who had been rumored to have already quit before Thursday's show, was nowhere to be found. AJ hosted the show by himself (wearing a shirt with "Still Free" on it) and called Free on a cell phone to announce that they would no longer be hosting the show.

There's no official word as to how and why this happened, but it has been brewing for a long time. Earlier this season, AJ took more than one "extended break" from the show. He was a correspondent for the show Extra briefly and left the show for a month to do a pilot for UPN. Free also has had her share of breaks from the show and various rumors flew about exactly why she was gone. The "break" she was on this time ended up being her last.

I liked watching Free and AJ over the years and I'm going to miss them. They started out as TV novices on a show that was initially BET's ripoff of MTV's Total Request Live. They were quite bad as hosts in the early years of the show, but the two of them had charisma and chemistry onscreen. Over the years, the two of them got better and so did the show. It became one of the cornerstones of BET's lineup. It was the place for anyone courting young black audiences to promote their music, movies, and TV shows. Just about every African-American celebrity has appeared on 106 & Park. When non-urban artists like *NSYNC and white actors like Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis wanted to promote their works to black audiences, they came to 106 & Park.

As much as I enjoyed watching Free and AJ on 106 & Park, it was probably time for them to move on to bigger and better things. Free has a budding career as a rapper, most recently appearing on the remix of the Ying Yang Twins' "Wait." AJ seems to have potential in Hollywood whether as an entertainment correspondent again or possibly with a show of his own. Either way, it's pretty clear that even with their stint on 106 & Park ending, we haven't seen the last of either AJ or Free. Here's hoping the new hosts are as good as Free and AJ were.