'19 Kids and Counting' News: 3 More Major Advertisers Pull Out After Backlash

By Liezl Dunuan, Christian Post Contributor Wednesday, May 27, 2015

"19 Kids and Counting," the family-oriented reality TV series on TLC, is suffering from a major public backlash over recent news that one of the members of the Duggar family admitted that he has molested underage girls when he was a teenager. Fans of the show are probably more worried about its future on the TLC network, as three major advertisers have pulled out from the show.

The network was previously looking at the possibility of continuing the show without Josh Duggar, as "19 Kids and Counting" is one of the network's biggest earners. Then, only one advertiser, General Mills, had withdrawn future ad placements from the show.

This number has grown to four, however. According to The Hollywood Reporter, a hotel chain, a shoestore chain and a pharmacy chain have pulled out future advertising placements from the show because of the public backlash.

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Walgreens, a pharmacy chain, was first to "pull the plug" which they did after an initial statement that are "monitoring the situation" before making a final decision. Their official statement said, "In the wake of recent news, we are no longer advertising on the '19 Kids and Counting' program."

The hotel chain, Choice Hotels followed suit. Responding to a tweet, it replied, "Thank you for reaching out. We share your concerns and we have decided to remove advertising from the show." Payless ShoeSource, another major advertiser on the show in the past also officially pulled out. They also took to Twitter to share the news with this tweet: "Our ads ran during the show as part of a larger buy w/ TLC. We are taking steps to have them removed from future episodes."

TLC has yet to make an official announcement about the show's fate. Last Friday, it stopped airing all episodes of the show. It is currently on its 15th season.

In October, the network cancelled another show "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" after allegations came out that Honey Boo Boo's mother was dating a convicted child molester.