Who stands to lose the most here? A&E will take a major hit without the show.
'Duck Dynasty' Rules A&E, Scores 2013's Top Reality Show Ratings
A&E hasn't dropped the show, so it doesn't stand to lose anything.
Monetarily anyway-- they lost their credibility ten years ago when they started running idiocy like this and Pawn Stars and Hoarders and whatever else is in that vast wasteland...
if you call huge increases in ratings and viewership losing credibility, well then maybe they have.
More to the point I'd call it "selling out".
>> A&E was envisioned as a commercial counterpart to PBS, and in its early days focused on such PBS-style programming as the Leonard Bernstein
Fidelio, filmed in 1978. Later it began to add programming originally seen on commercial networks, such as reruns of
Columbo;
Breaking Away;
Quincy;
The Equalizer;
Law & Order; and
Night Court. Highbrow British mysteries including Agatha Christie's
Poirot;
Cracker;
Dalziel and Pascoe;
Inspector Morse;
Lovejoy;
Midsomer Murders, the Joan Hickson
Miss Marple series and Sherlock Holmes were also featured; several of these series were produced in association with A&E. By 1990, A&E's original programming accounted for 35 to 40 percent of the network's program content.[9]
A&E's signature show was "Biography", a one-hour documentary series that A&E revived in 1987.[10] In 1994, airings of Biography went from weekly broadcasts to airing five nights a week, which helped boost A&E's ratings to record levels.[9] The nightly series became A&E's top-rated show and one of cable television's most notable successes.[10] Biography received primetime Emmy Awards in 1999 and 2002.[11]
In its original format, the network had often shown programming from abroad, particularly BBC network productions from the United Kingdom.[8] Examples of British programming frequently broadcast on the channel included the documentary Freud.[8] However, the broadcast of British programming on A&E has diminished greatly since it began incorporating more reality shows onto its schedule. ...
Its fine arts programming have also been completely removed from the channel's schedule. Thursday nights once featured an anthology series called A&E Stage, hosted by Tammy Grimes and later John Mauceri, which featured telecasts of notable plays, concerts, full-length documentaries related to the arts, and complete operas, although shown with commercials. Such programs as Otto Schenk's 1978 production of
Fidelio, with Leonard Bernstein conducting, were rebroadcast on this anthology, as well as an adaptation of Agatha Christie's
Spider's Web, starring Penelope Keith, originally broadcast in the UK on December 26, 1982. The final fine arts-related show to air on the network, "Breakfast with the Arts", once featured a higher quantity of classical music than in its final years, and fewer interviews. The show was cancelled in July 2007 <<
(Wiki)
And now it's duck hunters whose idea of fun is "killin' thangs", a day in the life of a pawn shop, losers buying storage lockers full of unknown junk, and a bounty hunter.
Yup. That's what I call selling out.