A little more than 24 hours after his profanity-laced private phone conversation was posted online, TV’s bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman’s show has been dumped from the air indefinitely.
Executives at A&E, the network that broadcasts “Dog The Bounty Hunter,” just announced it has “evaluated the circumstances” surrounding Chapman’s private phone conversation in which the reality star continually used a racial slur and has decided to take the popular show off the network’s schedule for the “foreseeable future.”
“We hope that Mr. Chapman continues the healing process that he has begun,” the network said in a public statement released late today.
I should note that A&E officials did make clear that Chapman’s series has not been cancelled. Given that it’s one of the network’s top-rated programs I’m sure it hurt them to merely pull it off the air indefinitely. But, I’m sure the network big wigs realized if they didn’t do something to publicly recognize Chapman’s negative behavior they would have become a target of viewers outrage as well.
For those of you just getting caught up with Dog’s drama, this entire brouhaha began on Wednesday when The National Enquirer posted a private conversation Chapman had with his son online. In it Dog used the N-word repeatedly (six times in the first 45 seconds of the five-minute clip) to describe his son’s black girlfriend.
Shortly after the conversation was made public several advertisers pulled out from Chapman’s reality TV show and civil rights groups called for its cancellation. Dog later issued an apology and pledged to make amends for his actions. A&E then suspended production of Chapman’s series.
To top that off, less than a day later it was revealed that Dog’s son was the one who taped the N-word laced phone call and sold it to the Enquirer for “a lot of money.”
Despite A&E’s move to temporarily halt production of Dog’s reality show and remove it from the current line up, several civil rights leaders said they were not satisfied and demanded network executives cancel the reality series. Some even went as far as to say that Chapman’s language was more damaging than shock jock Don Imus’ racial on-air comments.
What do you make of Dog’s drama? Do you think A&E should cancel his show?
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