Animal advocates, it's time to break out the bubbly. After pressure from PETA and tens of thousands of our members and supporters, NBC has pulled the plug on its cruel show, Animal Practice. Here's the celebration in progress at PETA's Bob Barker Building in L.A.:

The only thing funny about this "sitcom" was its laughable ratings. By not tuning in, viewers told NBC that they weren't interested in watching animals dressed up and made to perform cheap tricks—animals who had been torn away from their mothers as babies and subjected to cruel training methods and unnatural living conditions.

Even before the first episode aired, PETA showed NBC that if the network wanted to broadcast cruelty, it was going to have a rocky road ahead of it. We wrote to NBC and the show's producers and explained how wild animals suffer in the entertainment industry. We kept the heat on by asking advertisers to pull their support, organizing demonstrations, sending an urgent action alert to our members and supporters, and enlisting primate experts to speak out about how the portrayal of monkeys as "pets" leads irresponsible people to acquire them on a whim. And it worked.

NBC will air the three remaining episodes of Animal Practice that have already been filmed. Then viewers can rest assured that cruelty to animals won't be part of the Wednesday night TV lineup.

Cheers!

After learning that CareerBuilder is once again using baby chimpanzees in a Super Bowl ad, Anjelica Huston has teamed up with PETA to urge the company's CEO, Matt Ferguson, to stop using chimpanzees in its commercials—unless they are created using cutting-edge computer animation, like the conscientious folks behind Pfizer's Robitussin "orangutan" ads and the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes have done, saving animals from being taken away from their families, cruelly trained, and then abandoned when they can no longer be controlled.

No More Monkey Business

Anjelica—soon to be seen in NBC's Smash—has been a strong supporter of PETA's campaigns to end the use of chimpanzees and other great apes who are forced to work as "performers" in films and on television. In her letter, the Oscar-winning actor, well, smashes CareerBuilder's excuses, pointing out that monitoring on-set action doesn't prevent the cruelty that happens before and after the ad is shot, as described in the video Anjelica narrated for PETA on the subject. 

As Anjelica's letter to Ferguson states, "It is astonishing that you are unmoved by the videos, photographs, and case reports of what befalls these animals from the moment they are taken from their mothers to the moment they die." Let's hope he finally gets the message and that this will be the last year that the big game will be interrupted by images of real baby chimpanzees performing stupid tricks in a sad attempt to appeal to clueless job-seekers.

Darn my dyslexia! Make that: A vegetarian is going to appear on NBC's The Apprentice. Brainy Brandy Kuentzel went from corporate law to cupcakes—and now the vegetarian animal rights supporter is ready to vie for the top spot next to Donald Trump.

Will The Donald comb over Brandy's animal-friendly views in the boardroom? Will Brandy convince him to tell his own Trump Steaks, "You're fired"? Answers are coming soon: The new season starts September 16.

Written by Karin Bennett

As one of America's toughest trainers, The Biggest Loser's Bob Harper is hardcore. He's taken 100 pounds off a man in a mere seven weeks (remember Rudy?), breaks contestants down and builds them back up during Last Chance Workouts, and gives us the skinny with his Trainer Tips on NBC. Now he's focused on challenging the country to a 24-hour vegan cleanse.

Bob's latest tweet reads, "Your Challenge today is to go the next 24 hours, starting now eliminating ALL animal products. Good for your heart AND the environment!!"

Go vegan? But how? Well, in the famed words of Bob himself, "Just stop talking and do it!" Or, you know, a vegetarian/vegan starter kit works just as well.

Written by Christine Doré

In planning for the upcoming Winter Olympics, will the folks at NBC take a cue from the CBS executives who decided to run more advocacy ads during this year's Super Bowl? PETA is about to find out. We're asking the network to air our animated anti–seal slaughter commercial during the Olympics:

While NBC decides whether or not it will seal our deal, urge Canadian officials to stop the seal massacre immediately.

Written by Logan Scherer

Hey, NBC: We'd like to know … if a family-friendly announcement against abusing turkeys (who live in dark, ammonia-filled sheds where workers clip their beaks, break their legs and wings, and crush their heads) doesn't meet your standards, then what does?

When we first submitted our newest commercial to NBC in the hopes of running it during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the station asked us to give more information about the cruelty behind turkey slaughter to back up the statements made in the ad. But even after we sent the network this New York Times article chronicling the grisly facts about turkey factory farming, it nixed the ad, claiming that "this commercial does not meet NBC Universal standards."

We made this commercial with the parade's kid-centric audience in mind, hoping to empower children to make informed, healthy, and humane decisions about their diets and to stand up for those decisions.

While NBC's standards are a bit foggy, we've made sure that ours are crystal clear.

Written by Logan Scherer

So I’ve been vegetarian for kind of a long time, and back in the day, my choices for nonleather shoes and belts and so forth were pretty much nonexistent. If I found a decent pair of vegan shoes in my size, I’d snap up a couple of pairs at a time. Honestly, it was a little tough. But that was back in the dark ages, and today it couldn’t be easier. I don’t have to look hard at all to find cruelty-free clothes anymore, and as you can see from the picture, the results are positively devastating.

But I digress. The point is that I was really excited to see this Today Show piece about modern cruelty-free fashions. It makes it clear how easy it is nowadays to be cruelty-free and super fashionable at the same time, if that's your thing. Check it out: