“Goodbye…for now.”
That’s what Ryan Seacrest said during the final seconds of the 15th and final season of American Idol. He was “hoping somewhere it would come back,” he said during an episode of his new show, Live with Kelly and Ryan.
It was rumored that a few different networks were bidding on the show, with ABC coming out the victor. After ABC announced last week that they will be reviving the hit singing competition show, even more rumors began swirling as to who would be hosting and sitting behind the judges tables.
Executives at Fox, where Idol aired for 15 years, spoke with the press on a conference call about their new fall schedule and of course, American Idol‘s future.
“It’s obviously a tough one for us,” Chairman and CEO of Fox Television Group Dana Walden said. “We love American Idol…Yes, it feels bad knowing its coming back on another network.”
On the call, Walden also revealed that just a couple months after the show ended in 2016, she sat down with production company Freemantle and talked about plans on bringing it back, but not until 2020.
Freemantle, on the other hand, was “determined to get the show back on the air as soon as possible.”
“It felt to us, sitting in those initial meetings, that it would be extremely fraudulent to bring the show back that quickly…that our fans would not appreciate being told one thing and then bringing it back right away,” she said.
Fox’s ultimate goal was to bring Idol back and even though they thought it was too soon, they didn’t go down without a fight.
“We did make an offer, Freemantle was definitely not interested,” Walden revealed.
Do you think it’s too soon to bring back American Idol? Let us know in the comments.