In the wake of the George Floyd protests and calls for the defunding and disbandment of police departments across the nation, the Paramount Network has decided it was the right time to cancel the decades-old show Cops as the appetite to watch police “protect and serve” isn’t exactly at an all-time high.
Spike TV, the predecessor to the Paramount Network, picked up “Cops” in 2013 after the show was canceled by Fox, its network home for 25 years.
The cancelation of the show has been a long time in the making as the civil rights group Color of Change began campaigning in 2013 for Fox to not renew Cops and urged advertisers to avoid supporting the show.
Since “Cops” made its debut in 1989, the group said, the network, the show’s producers and the advertisers “have built a profit model around distorted and dehumanizing portrayals of black Americans and the criminal justice system.”
Still Cops found a new lease on life as Spike TV (now known as the Paramount Network) picked up the show as the organization behind Cops argued the show “offers a highly filtered version of crime and the criminal justice system — a ‘reality’ where the police are always competent, crime-solving heroes and where the bad boys always get caught.”
