Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo studios

The Duggar family, May 21, 2002. (Credit: AP/April L. Brown)

TLC, the network that airs Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s “19 Kids and Counting,” is a corporate holding of Discovery Communications, the self-described “#1 pay-TV programmer in the world.” In addition to TLC and the Discovery Channel, Discovery Communications owns Animal Planet, Science, Investigation Discovery, a controlling interest in EuroSport, and the Oprah Winfrey Network, as well as dozens more channels, both here and across the world. The company boasts 2.9 billion cumulative worldwide subscribers. TLC, however, was originally a product of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA, which in 1972 jointly founded “The Learning Channel.” In 1991, Discovery acquired the channel, and in 1998, rebranded it to the shorter and snappier “TLC.” The network’s tag line became “Life: Unscripted.”
But at this point, TLC is not a network that seems particularly concerned about putting some good out into the world. It is now a source of frequently commented-upon irony that the network used to be called “The Learning Channel,” and with a track record that includes the openly condescending “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” and a particularly exploitative special called “The Man With the 132-Lb. Scrotum,” it would not be that surprising if our expectations for the network were not terribly high. And yet here we are, in 2015, surprised that a TLC show about an incredibly conservative family with 19 home-schooled kids and Puritan ideas of sexual impurity might have had some dysfunction lurking under the surface.
Now, in the wake of a report from InTouch and a confession from eldest son Josh Duggar, audiences have to contend with the fact that “19 Kids and Counting,” an unscripted show about a very large family of Christian fundamentalists, has been employing a sex offender for 15 seasons of the show since its inception in 2008. Given that all the children were home-schooled—and that the police reports obtained by InTouch indicate the abuse took place inside the Duggar house—Josh’s victims were almost certainly his younger sisters. The Duggar family eventually found out the abuse, as did the local authorities, but it was buried until an anonymous tip was sent to Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo studios. Josh Duggar has since owned up to the abuse, saying that he came clean to his family and turned himself over to God’s grace. He now has three children of his own with his wife, Anna.