‘Cops’ beneath arrest: Paramount pulls plug on long-running US actuality present amid rise in anti-police sentiment

The postponed premiere of season 33 of ‘Cops’ is unlikely to ever be screened. Amid the present wave of anti-police sentiment, Paramount Community mentioned it has no plans for the favored actuality present to return anytime quickly.

The docuseries was first aired on Fox in 1989 and follows regulation enforcement professionals as they go on patrol and serve arrest warrants. It was canceled in 2013, however ViacomCBS community Spike TV quickly picked it up. Since rebranded as Paramount Community, the channel continued airing ‘Cops’ up till mid-Could, and the brand new season had been anticipated to debut on Monday.

Final week, the doom looming over ‘Cops’ turned obvious, when Paramount Community did not put it on its schedule. Monday primetime on the community was as a substitute filled with ‘Ghostbusters’ reruns. On Wednesday, the corporate confirmed that the present had been axed within the wake of nationwide protests in opposition to police brutality triggered by the dying of George Floyd.

“Cops is just not on the Paramount Community, and we haven’t any present or future plans for it to return,” a community spokesperson mentioned in an announcement.

Earlier, the A&E Community stopped broadcasting ‘Stay PD,’ an unscripted present just like ‘Cops.’ The favored program is scheduled to return on June 12, nonetheless.

The US leisure business has been put beneath intense strain to drop content material like police procedurals or cop-buddy comedies, which in line with critics whitewash police misconduct by portraying officers in a constructive method. Widespread franchises appear to be resisting to this point, however some concessions to public anger have been made.

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Warren Leight, the showrunner of traditional procedural ‘Legislation & Order: SVU’ mentioned the dying of Floyd and the darker sides of police work might be addressed within the upcoming season 22. “Presumably our cops will nonetheless be attempting to do the correct factor however it is going to be more durable for them and they will perceive why it is laborious for them,” he instructed the Hollywood Reporter.

However the business did present a couple of sacrificial choices to the offended public currently. HBO Max dropped ‘Gone with the Wind’ over its romanticized portrayal of racial relations within the post-Civil Struggle American South. And the 2000s sketch comedy present ‘Little Britain’ acquired booted from a number of streaming platforms, together with Netflix, BBC iPlayer and Britbox, over a black feminine character performed within the sequence by a white male actor carrying blackface.

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