According to The Hollywood Reporter, TLC’s decision to cancel the cash cow that was 19 Kids And Counting has cost Discovery Communications, its parent company, about $24 million. This is apparently the result of “restructuring and other charges,” which can pretty much all be blamed on the show’s Duggar family and its decision to cover up the fact that one of its 19 kids, Josh Duggar, molested several girls (including a few of his sisters) when he was a teenager. The rest of THR’s article gets into some complicated financial stuff, but the important thing here is that TLC is losing a lot of money because of its association with this family and—if you’d rather TLC share some of the blame—its decision to put them on TV in the first place.
Of course, $24 million might not sound like too much money when the alternative cost is your mortal soul, presumably what TLC would’ve traded in had it decided to keep 19 Kids And Counting on the air. Although, TLC did wait almost two months after the molestation allegations came out before it officially canceled the show, so maybe that decision was harder than we might expect. Either way, TLC’s reputation remains untarnished (you know, more or less), and it will stay like that at least until the next family it decides to put on TV turns out to have a horrible secret.