Originally Posted by
Zundfolge
I disagree. I believe that despite the fact that the show has been tremendously popular and profitable, most of the A&E top brass would love to find an excuse to get rid of it. They only green lighted it in the first place because they thought it would be nothing but a "make fun of the hayseeds" show but low and behold the hayseeds in flyover country actually identified with these stupid bearded hicks (who turned out not to be as stupid as A&E thought) and now its a touchstone of mainstream Christian and conservative culture the A&E people don't want to believe exists let alone dominates America.
A&E was started to be sort of an NPR of Cable ... with off-Broadway plays, symphonies, BBC leftovers like Masterpiece Theater and maybe some shows from Jazz clubs at night. It was "Arts & Entertainment". It was meant to be an "intelligent" cable channel that would go out of its way to alienate Joe Sixpack and his ilk. Then Disney bought them and demanded they make money so like most cable channels devoted to arts, history, science and learning they became reality TV channels.