• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, December 12, 2024

Two reality stars who have been long associated with TLC are moving to Lifetime, which appears to be in the hunt for high-profile personalities to bolster its lineup of unscripted docuseries.

One of the two is the renowned bariatric surgeon from Houston, Younan Nowzaradan, 80, who is known to millions as “Dr. Now.”

The news, announced this week by Lifetime, comes on the heels of another reality doctor, dermatologist Sandra Lee, 53, of TLC’s “Dr. Pimple Popper,” forging a deal for a Lifetime show last fall.

Nowzaradan is the long-time star of “My 600-lb Life,” which has been a mainstay on TLC since 2012.

In each episode, viewers get to follow the weight-loss journeys of the morbidly obese.

Many of them weigh well north of 600 pounds, and are seeking to reduce their weight to at least 600 pounds because that is often the benchmark weight for Dr. Now to approve weight-loss surgery.

Their stories of extreme food addictions, and the challenges they face when Dr. Now orders them to adopt crash diets to save their lives, play out in two-hour episodes.

By all appearances, “My 600-lb Life” has been an important show for TLC. Not only has the show run for 12 seasons in 14 years, but when it is in a new season, it takes up two hours of TLC prime time on Wednesday nights, and sometimes two hours of repeat episodes on Thursday nights as well -- for a total of four hours of TLC prime time per week.

Dr. Now’s new show is set to premiere on Lifetime in just a few weeks on Monday, January 6 -- which indicates that production on the show, which follows its subjects for a year or more, has been underway for some time.

Except for the show’s title -- “The 6000 lb. Diaries with Dr. Now” -- the Lifetime show seems to have adopted the very same format as the TLC show.

In the new show, no one individual weighs 6,000 pounds (the TV Blog believes this is not humanly possible).

Instead, the number is a total derived from the 10, two-hour episodes of the show, each dedicated to a single subject who either weighs 600 pounds or is trying to reduce sufficiently to achieve that weight.

Season 12 of “My 600-lb Life” concluded last April, but TLC says it still has another new season of the show left, which will air next year. 

That means Dr. Now will be seen on both TLC and Lifetime in shows that are remarkably similar.

Meanwhile, the dermatologist known as Dr. Pimple Popper will debut her new show on Lifetime some time next year. The title: “Dr. Pimple Popper: Breaking Out.”

On her TLC show, Lee was known for the procedures she performed to remove huge, conspicuous growths from patients’ skins. 

More than just “pimple popping,” her procedures sometimes made for challenging viewing. Her ninth and last season on TLC ended in August 2023.

Indications are that the two personalities were not “poached” directly from TLC. A source tells the TV Blog that TLC opted not to renew each of their contracts.