The Associated Press reports that after many weeks of deliberation, TLC has finally decided to cancel 19 Kids and Counting. The show “will no longer appear on the air,” the network said. This decision comes after it was revealed in May that the eldest Duggar son, Josh, molested several underage girls when he was a teen—including four of his sisters.Even though 19 Kids will no longer air on TLC, it appears that may be a spin-off show in the works based on Jill and Jessa Duggar.[...]
So there will still be Duggars on the network. Rumor has it that even though 19 Kids and Counting is dead, Jessa and Jill are in talks to star in a spinoff show. As group president of TLC, Animal Planet, and Velocity Networks Marjorie Kaplan told the AP, “We spent the past month and a half in thoughtful consideration about what is the best way forward here.”
David Badash at The New Civil Rights Movement:
"19 Kids And Counting" has been cancelled. The reality TV show about Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar was suspended when news broke months ago that elder son Josh Duggar had sexually molested five young girls, several of them his own family members, when he was a teen.Kevin O'Keeffe at Mic:TLC, the network that aired the hit show, told the AP that the show "will no longer appear on the air."
TLC canceled 19 Kids and Counting, the show that chronicled the Duggar family, according to the Associated Press.Catherine Thompson at TPM:"After thoughtful consideration, TLC and the Duggar family have decided to not move forward with 19 Kids and Counting," the network said in a statement. "The show will no longer appear on the air."
The move comes after family member Josh Duggar admitted to molesting his sisters in 2002 and 2003. While the show lost support from other sources, including being pulled from Hulu, the network's only initial action was to stop airing the show, leaving its fate in jeopardy as it considered green-lighting a spin-off instead.
Duggar's admissions became headline news after InTouch Weekly published documents revealing he molested several young women, including his own sisters. He was 14 and 15 when the crimes happened. The patriarch of the family, Jim Bob Duggar, failed to report the abuses to the police until a year after Josh's confession.
TLC has decided to cancel its hit reality show "19 Kids and Counting" following accusations that star Josh Duggar molested underage girls, including his sisters, when he was a teenager.Expect Duggar fans to not take this news well, with bogus cries along the lines of "The Duggars are persecuted for being [Conservative] Christians."The molestation accusations first surfaced back in May when tabloid magazine InTouch Weekly published a series of police reports that showed Josh Duggar, the eldest son of the ultra-conservative, Christian family featured in "19 Kids and Counting," was investigated in 2006 for allegedly fondling five underage girls years earlier, when he was 14 years old.
TLC pulled episodes of the Duggar family's reality show from the air a couple days after InTouch Weekly first reported the allegations. But the network waited more than a month and a half before deciding to pull the plug completely on its most-watched program despite increasing pressure from advertisers.
"It's no secret that '19 Kids and Counting' was a really, really hit show," Marjorie Kaplan, who oversees TLC for parent company Discovery Communications, told the Associated Press on Thursday. "But we have some other great shows, both on the air and in the pipeline."
While their reality show, which ran for 10 seasons, is just now coming to an end, the release of the police reports had an immediate negative effect on the Duggar family. Josh Duggar, now 27, resigned his position as the executive director of the anti-gay Family Research Council's lobbying arm immediately after admitting to vague "wrongdoing" in a Facebook post.