Courtesy of MTV

Take That, Tacky TV!

MTV's theory that "if their parents hate it, teens will watch it," didn't hold true when it came to their controversial series, Skins. The show had a publicity-filled first season, but after advertisers started pulling out and viewership dropped, the former music video channel has been forced to cancel the show.

Read: Many of the Actors on Skins Were Underage, Causing More Controversy

MTV's American version of the hit British show Skins is chock-full of everything parents pray their teens aren't engaging in: drugs, sex, and scandal. The network believed that a huge portion of their teen viewers could relate to the content, but either they couldn't or their parents wouldn't allow them to watch.

The network released a statement saying, in part, "Skins is a global television phenomenon that, unfortunately, didn't connect with a US audience as much as we had hoped." It didn't connect with MTV's advertisers either, considering a whole slew of them pulled their ads after seeing the scandalous content. If Taco Bell doesn't want to be associated with a show, you know it must be pretty bad.

Series' creator Bryan Elsley claims, "Skins is a very simple and in fact rather old fashioned television series.... about the lives and loves of teenagers..." Old fashioned? I suppose teens have always had to deal with sex and drugs, but nobody in their right mind would refer to the way those subjects were handled as "old fashioned." It sounds like Elsley is blaming the show's failure on parents as he laments, "[Skins] tries to tell the truth. Sometimes that truth can be a little painful to adults and parents."

Read: At Least We'll Always Have the Real World

Now, let's all breathe a collective sigh of relief that teenagers couldn't relate to Skins as much as MTV had hoped. Too bad the same can't be said of the inordinately tacky guidos of Jersey Shore which remains incredibly popular. Why can't we revert to some good old-fashioned Real World?. Now, that's the kind of stuff we can all relate to.