There was a window in the summer of 2020 for once unthinkable, and unlikely, progress. This included the cancellation of Cops and Live PD, two reality shows embedded with law enforcement that sourced footage of real people in real arrests to valorize police and mock their targets. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, the shows’ networks, Paramount and A&E, responded to pressure to reckon with television’s role in producing so-called copaganda. It was a long overdue move given that Cops, the longest-running reality show in history which could air as many as 69 times a week in syndication, cemented the influential archetype of police as hard-charging, swash-buckling, ends-justify-the-means characters and left a trail of off-camera damage in its wake.
It would not last. Last September, Cops moved to Fox News Media’s streaming platform, Fox Nation, which aired its 34th season the following month. And on Wednesday, cable channel Reelz announced it would revive Live PD, arguably the more unscrupulous, dishonest and dangerous version of its progenitor. The “live” version of Cops, Live PD premiered on A&E in 2016 and quickly became the most-watched show in its time slot with an average of 2.4m viewers. It was more popular than Cops, running in hour-long marathons, with six spinoffs by 2020. The return of Cops and Live PD is not surprising – there was too much money, too large a fandom, too wide a cultural divide and too little incentive for producers to not capitalize on it all to keep them off the air. But that does not lessen the disappointment, nor obviate restating what many unwilling participants already know: the revival of Live PD is a backslide, and people will pay for it.
