Fox puts American Idol revival timing on blast ahead of upfronts
While speaking to reporters ahead of upfronts, the network’s programming heads in Dana Walden and Gary Newman did their part to discuss all of the moving parts that went into original network missing out on getting the show back despite them coexisting for fifteen years. In the end, a whole lot of it came down to money. Fox made the decision to end American Idol after the show’s production company wanted to stick with its current judging panel of Keith Urban, Jennifer Lopez, and Harry Connick Jr., even though said panel was costing them a ton of money. Because of that, said production company lost money because the show wasn’t on, which led to them aggressively shopping the property before it landed on ABC.
One other component on Fox’s end was a concern that the optics were bad in terms of bringing a show back two years after saying it was over. Per Entertainment Weekly, Walden had the following to say:
“They were determined to get this show back on the air as quickly as possible … We spent about $25 million sending a clear message that it was the farewell season. It felt to us it would be extremely fraudulent to bring the show back quickly, that fans would not appreciate being told one thing and then having the show brought back right away.”
There is a bit of this sentiment out there. Nobody seems altogether thrilled in the casual TV community to have the show back so soon, and it’ll be curious to see what the ratings end up being.
So why did Fox even consider bringing the show back with this thought process in mind? Much of it has to deal with where things lie in terms of their own bottom line at the moment. Ratings for the network have struggled as of late, with even their biggest hit in Empire seeing the numbers slide big over the past year and a half after it came out of the gate strong. American Idol was expensive, but it did produce great ratings.
Given some of the recent talk about Katy Perry maybe joining the ABC edition as a judge, it doesn’t feel as though it’s about to get any cheaper in the near future. (Photo: Fox.)