TLC has announced that it was canceling "19 Kids and Counting" following weeks of not knowing the date of the popular TV show. The decision was made several weeks after it was revealed Josh Duggar sexually molested five girls.
The network is not moving forward with an 11th season of "19 Kids" featuring the Duggars, whose show "will no longer appear on the air," the network told the Associated Press on Thursday. "We spent the past month and a half in thoughtful consideration about what is the best way forward here," said Marjorie Kaplan, group president of TLC, Animal Planet and Velocity networks.
TLC also announced that it is teaming up with two prominent child-protection organizations for an ongoing campaign to raise awareness about child sexual abuse.
The show was pulled off the network in May after reports surfaced that the oldest child, Josh Duggar, molested five young girls when he was a teenager, including four of his younger sisters. Josh Duggar apologized for unspecified actions in a Facebook post and resigned from the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian group where he had worked as a lobbyist.
Two weeks after the news broke the Duggar patriarch and matriarch, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, spoke to Fox News' Megyn Kelly about their son. "He was still a kid," Jim Bob Duggar said of Josh in the interview. "He was still a juvenile. He wasn't an adult. This was not rape or anything like that. This was touching someone over their clothes."
"19 Kids and Counting" had been a popular series for TLC, having drawn an average of 3.5 million viewers an episode through April, The New York Times reported.
