Cops creator and reality TV pioneer John Langley dies at 78

Variety

Langley died Saturday of an apparent heart attack while competing in the Coast to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250 off-road race. Cops, which Langley created with his producing partner Malcolm Barbour, ran for 32 seasons and more than 1,100 episodes, from 1988 until it was canceled a year ago this month after George Floyd's police killing sparked an outcry over scripted and unscripted cop shows that glorify police. As Variety notes, Cops premiered on the fledgling Fox network in in the aftermath of the 1988 Writers Guild strike, since it had no union writers. The show would go on to earn four Emmy nominations in the outstanding informational series category. In a 2009 interview with the TV Academy, Langley said: "I'm a kid of the 60's. I'm sort of anti-authoritarian by nature. If you told me I was going to do a show about cops, I would have said, 'What am I going to call it, Pigs?'" Langley went on to produce other crime-themed reality shows, including Inside American Jail, Street Patrol and Las Vegas Jailhouse. The Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss, who began his reality career as a writer for the Fox show Totally Hidden Video, paid tribute to Langley. "RIP — John Langley. Thanks for blazing the trail," tweeted Fleiss.