Thou Shalt Not Worship False Idols

Well, that escalated quickly…. it appears that highly rumored American Idol revival is already DOA, despite the fact that both NBC and Fox submitted competing offers to revive the show. As was recently reported, Idol‘s original network, Fox and NBC, the home of America’s Got Talent and The Voice — the show that helped kill Idol — both made competing offers to bring a rebooted version of Idol back as early as Summer 2018.

According to TMZ, which broke the story, the deal fell apart even before Idol‘s co-owners — Fremantle Media and Core Media Group — could even mount a counter-offer to the networks. As the story goes, Fremantle also owns America’s Got Talent, and TMZ says Freemantle was pushing hard to pressure Core into agreeing to accept the NBC offer. TMZ says execs at Core felt that Fremantle had a conflict of interest and was pushing Idol to make AGT the cornerstone of a year-round talent competition, and by doing so, was trying to diminish the unique value of Idol. As TMZ said, “the two companies could not see eye to eye,” adding, “all the negotiations have been shelved.”