‘So You Think You Can Dance’ season 11: Could Paula Abdul replace Mary Murphy?

When the news was first announced that Mary Murphy would be departing “So You Think You Can Dance,” the rumor mill started almost immediately that Paula Abdul could be the one to replace her. She already has a history on the network, knows dance very well in her own right, and her experience in hip-hop would have her work well for this street dancing / stage dancing theme that the show is trying to do.

Well, it was made pretty darn clear at Fox’s TCA Winter Press Tour today that Paula is someone that the executives at the network are interested in. Speaking per The TV Page, one of the two programming heads at Fox in Gary Newman said the following about the network’s discussions with Paula:

“We are in conversations with Paula.  We don’t have a deal closed so we have nothing to announce.  We hope to soon.  We think Paula is great.  America loves her and responds to her.  We love Mary.  She was a huge part of that show.  She was a great advocate for  the show and a great advocate for the network.  But we just felt the show needed to be shaken up a bit.  We worked with our producers and tried to do that through some other creative changes to the show, which we will be announcing in time.  So we wish Mary well.  She was a great partner over the years.”

For those curious, Newman also confirmed that they are in talks with Simon Cowell about a variety of things, but a return to “American Idol” is not one of them. We’ll have to see where the chips fall there.

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