Looks like the easiest way for TV executives to boost ratings on their TV shows is to find the youngest girl they can and make her pregnant.

That's what has happened with Jamie Lynn Spears' Nickelodeon show Zoey 101. The just-broadcast season finale of Zoey 101 – the first episode since Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy – recorded viewing figures twice as high as usual.

Special mention should be given to the lucrative Dirty Old Middle-Aged Men demographic, which we imagine has gone sky high since Jamie Lynn Spears revealed that she was sexually active.

Although in theory the biggest victim of Jamie Lynn Spears' teenage pregnancy – thanks to a perfect storm of genetic makeup, family history and the fact that it's doomed to spend the rest of its life on the same family tree as Kevin Federline – the second biggest was thought to be Zoey 101, Jamie Lynn Spears' zany Nickelodeon teen sitcom.

You'll remember, of course, that days after Jamie Lynn Spears announced her pregnancy Nickelodeon swiftly killed off Zoey 101 for fear that the sight of a pregnant teenager on TV would corrupt the world's youth so much that they'd start drinking from Daddy's whisky bottle and listening to this new-fangled rock and roll music.

At the time it seemed like a perfectly sensible thing to do, because nobody wanted to watch another Sabrina The Teenage Witch where the lead character is obviously about 45 years old and holding a cigarette behind her back as she delivers her lines, but now it seems like a strange phenomenon is developing.

It seems as though people actually want to watch Zoey 101 more now that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. Sky reports:

Following the announcement that Brit's sis is to be a teen mum, more than double the normal amount of viewers tuned in to watch the season finale of Jamie Lynn's Nickelodeon show Zoey 101… Jamie Lynn's baby announcement appears to have in fact drawn people in. With 7.3 million viewers tuning in for the end of Zoey 101's third season, Nickelodeon have now confirmed they'll be going ahead with a fourth season to be aired this February.

Obviously most of these viewers will have watched the show out of nothing more than morbid curiosity, wondering to themselves "Who is this slut?" and then being slightly stunned that, unlike her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears can speak using full sentences and a range of more than two extreme emotions.

And – we'll hold our hands up too here – the news of Jamie Lynn Spears getting pregnant made us watch Zoey 101 too. Admittedly it was shit and we turned off after about ten seconds, but it's more than we've managed before. So maybe this tactic actually works – pregnant children are the way forward.

Having said that, not even the knowledge that a four-year-old boy got knocked by a goat could make us watch Hollyoaks, so don't get any ideas Channel 4. 

Read more:

Jamie Lynn's Baby Hit – Sky 

Before she decided to make the leap into becoming a professional pregnant schoolgirl, Jamie Lynn Spears was best known for her Nickelodeon TV show Zoey 101.

OK, that's not exactly right – Jamie Lynn Spears was best known for being Britney Spears' sister, then for being in a film where she played Britney Spears' sister, then for being Britney Spears' sister in a TV show about Britney Spears, then for being Kevin Federline's sister-in-law and then for her Nickelodeon TV show Zoey 101. Not that any of that means much any more, because it's been reported that Nickelodeon has dropped Zoey 101 thanks to Jamie Lynn's pregnancy. Heaven knows why, because we always thought that children's TV badly needed a teen sitcom about a schoolgirl with postnatal depression so severe that she routinely fantasises about dropping it out of a window. Or something.

A few months ago, Jamie Lynn Spears had it all going for her – she was like a younger, less berserk version of Britney Spears with her own zany TV show about teenage girls talking at each other really fast and a wonderful childhood sweetheart boyfriend who she met at church. But that was then.

Now Jamie Lynn Spears is the pregnant 16-year-old, equally berserk sister of Britney Spears with a boyfriend who's a 'lying cheating dog' who might not even be the baby's father anyway and possibly no TV show at all, let alone a zany one. It's been reported that Nickelodeon has realised that no Zoey 101 at all is better than Zoey 101 starring a sallow-faced calcium-deficient single teenage mother who keeps squirting breastmilk through her starter bra. The Sun reports:

The fourth and final season has already been filmed — with two episodes that will see the end of US schoolgirl Zoey. And a show source further revealed: "Nickelodeon bosses are still undecided whether to air season four or not. For now it looks like it has been canned."

This news will come as a blow to all kinds of people – not just infant fans of Zoey 101 who were keen to see how their hero's story ended, but also to eagle-eyed cultural commentators eager to see if Jamie Lynn Spears could manage to get through a scene without barfing everywhere or wolfing down jar after jar of picked onions to satiate her irrational pregnancy craving like some sort of vinegary witch. 

And it's unfortunate that Nickelodeon wants to can Zoey 101 completely, since the final episodes actually dealt with Zoey getting knocked up by an older boy and then watching the rest of her life fall apart as a result. Ironic really.

So what now for Jamie Lynn Spears' career? Surely her days as a child star are numbered, and she still looks about nine years old so she might not be ready for the leap into more grown-up stuff, so she's stuffed, right? Poor Jamie Lynn must be distraught – if only she'd thought to post photos of her minge around the internet instead of actually getting pregnant, she'd have had a much easier ride.

The moral here, girls, is that you should post pictures of your minges around the internet. We think.

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Axe Falls On Britney's Sister – The Sun