TLC.com requests return 403 and JSON Parse error

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Checklist

• I'm reporting a broken site support
• I've verified that I'm running youtube-dl version 2020.01.01
• I've checked that all provided URLs are alive and playable in a browser
• I've checked that all URLs and arguments with special characters are properly quoted or escaped
• I've searched the bugtracker for similar issues including closed ones

Verbose log

1. With 'www.' in the URL

youtube-dl https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out --verbose --geo-bypass-country US
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out', u'--verbose', u'--geo-bypass-country', u'US']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.01.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.16 (CPython) - Darwin-19.2.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.2.2, ffprobe 4.2.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Using fake IP 6.83.197.225 (US) as X-Forwarded-For.
[Discovery] kicked-out: Downloading token JSON metadata
ERROR: Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden (caused by HTTPError()); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 627, in _request_webpage
    return self._downloader.urlopen(url_or_request)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2237, in urlopen
    return self._opener.open(req, timeout=self._socket_timeout)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 435, in open
    response = meth(req, response)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 548, in http_response
    'http', request, response, code, msg, hdrs)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 473, in error
    return self._call_chain(*args)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain
    result = func(*args)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib2.py", line 556, in http_error_default
    raise HTTPError(req.get_full_url(), code, msg, hdrs, fp)

After looking at the outgoing request in the code, I realised that the redirect_url from the authorization calll was set to www.www.tlc.com, so I made another request without the 'www.' in the URL

2. Without 'www.' in URL

youtube-dl https://tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out --verbose --geo-bypass-country US          
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'https://tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out', u'--verbose', u'--geo-bypass-country', u'US']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.01.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.16 (CPython) - Darwin-19.2.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.2.2, ffprobe 4.2.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Using fake IP 6.50.12.106 (US) as X-Forwarded-For.
[Discovery] kicked-out: Downloading token JSON metadata
ERROR: kicked-out: Failed to parse JSON  (caused by ValueError('No JSON object could be decoded',)); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 899, in _parse_json
    return json.loads(json_string)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/__init__.py", line 339, in loads
    return _default_decoder.decode(s)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 364, in decode
    obj, end = self.raw_decode(s, idx=_w(s, 0).end())
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/json/decoder.py", line 382, in raw_decode
    raise ValueError("No JSON object could be decoded")
ValueError: No JSON object could be decoded
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 796, in extract_info
    ie_result = ie.extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 530, in extract
    ie_result = self._real_extract(url)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/discovery.py", line 86, in _real_extract
    'redirectUri': 'https://fusion.ddmcdn.com/app/mercury-sdk/180/redirectHandler.html?https://www.%s.com' % site,
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 892, in _download_json
    expected_status=expected_status)
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 876, in _download_json_handle
    fatal=fatal), urlh
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 903, in _parse_json
    raise ExtractorError(errmsg, cause=ve)
ExtractorError: kicked-out: Failed to parse JSON  (caused by ValueError('No JSON object could be decoded',)); please report this issue on https://yt-dl.org/bug . Make sure you are using the latest version; type  youtube-dl -U  to update. Be sure to call youtube-dl with the --verbose flag and include its complete output.

3. With added cookie file to include eosAn

youtube-dl https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out --verbose --geo-bypass-country US --cookies cookie2.txt 
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: []
[debug] Custom config: []
[debug] Command-line args: [u'https://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/sister-wives/full-episodes/kicked-out', u'--verbose', u'--geo-bypass-country', u'US', u'--cookies', u'cookie2.txt']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, out UTF-8, pref UTF-8
[debug] youtube-dl version 2020.01.01
[debug] Python version 2.7.16 (CPython) - Darwin-19.2.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.2.2, ffprobe 4.2.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Using fake IP 6.244.170.1 (US) as X-Forwarded-For.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 174, in _run_module_as_main
    "__main__", fname, loader, pkg_name)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/runpy.py", line 72, in _run_code
    exec code in run_globals
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/__main__.py", line 19, in <module>
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 474, in main
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/__init__.py", line 464, in _real_main
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 2018, in download
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/YoutubeDL.py", line 796, in extract_info
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 530, in extract
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/discovery.py", line 69, in _real_extract
  File "/usr/local/bin/youtube-dl/youtube_dl/extractor/common.py", line 2831, in _get_cookies
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/Cookie.py", line 583, in __init__
    if input: self.load(input)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/Cookie.py", line 643, in load
    for k, v in rawdata.items():
AttributeError: 'unicode' object has no attribute 'items'

Description

I am trying to download episodes from TLC.com but y-dl is returning some errors. I can watch the episode in my browser.
I see there is a TLC.de downloader, but that region doesn't have all the episodes that I want to download.
Looking at the code it seems that the URL given to y-dl needs to have the www. part removed, so I tried again without that (Debug Log 2).
I also tried with a cookie file generated by cookie.txt plugin and that came back with a different error (Debug Log 3)