Bounce TV and BET announced Tuesday they were pulling shows featuring Bill Cosby after court records unsealed this week show he admitted under oath to buying sedatives with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with.
Brennan Linsley / AP
Two cable television networks aimed at black audiences said Tuesday that they would no longer air shows starring Bill Cosby, who has been accused by several women of sexual assault.
The announcements from Bounce TV and BET came one day after the Associated Press published court records showing that in 2005, Bill Cosby admitted in a deposition to purchasing quaaludes with the intent of giving them to women he wanted to have sex with.
Bounce TV was the first network to pull a Cosby series from the air in light of the news. It had previously broadcast episodes of Cosby, which originally ran from 1996 to 2000.
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Bounce TV — which debuted in 2011 and counts Martin Luther King III and Andrew Young among its co-founders— said it would "cease airing the television series Cosby immediately."
Hours later, BET announced that it too is "no longer airing The Cosby Show episodes on Centric," one of its affiliates.
Netflix currently streams episodes of A Different World, another Cosby how, and has not announced any changes to its show options. BuzzFeed News has reached out for additional information.
According to the Pennsylvania court records unsealed on Monday, Cosby elaborated on an encounter he had with a woman backstage at a show in Las Vegas.
"I give her the quaaludes. We then have sex," he said under oath during a deposition in 2005.
The now-77-year-old comedian also testified to giving a former Temple University employee three halves of Benadryl pills. A civil lawsuit filed against Cosby regarding that encounter was later settled for an undisclosed amount in 2006.
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1JSu4UG
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