Just days after it was reported that Paramount Network had decided to pull the upcoming season of Cops from their schedule comes the news that the network has elected to cancel the long-running series altogether in the wake of the nation-wide protests following the death of George Floyd. "Cops is not on the Paramount Network and we don’t have any current or future plans for it to return," said a Paramount Network spokesperson in a statement to Deadline.
Launched in 1989 on Fox, Cops primarily followed police officers during patrols, emergency calls, and other police activities. The series ran for 23 years on Fox before it was shifted over to Spike TV in 2013, which was later rebranded as Paramount Network. The new season of Cops was slated to debut yesterday, but unless some other network resurrects the series at some point, we've probably seen the last of the series. In terms of other unscripted police-related TV shows, A&E pulled last weekend's episodes of Live PD and is said to be "evaluating the right time to bring it back." It's not just unscripted police shows which have found themselves being pulled from the schedule, as Deadline reported yesterday that the second season premiere of L.A.'s Finest, a BAD BOYS spin-off series starring Gabrielle Union and Jessica Alba, has been postponed and will be rescheduled for a date later in the year. As television is full of many shows revolving around law-enforcement, I'd imagine that those shows might look a little different in future.