Walden says other singing competition shows on TV focus heavily on the panelists, while The Four will be centered on the singers.
That left Fox in a dilemma, which was to move forward “at that extraordinary loss” or stop running the show for some time and heavily promote one final season.
Walden said the show had also become “extremely expensive”, largely because of the high fees of the celebrity judges.
“It was a really tough decision to make. the economics were awful for us at that moment”, she added. We spent a lot of time talking with [producer] Fremantle about what were the solutions to that problem. And while they were open to doing some minor cosmetic trims, they were very anxious about doing anything that would disrupt the chemistry of that panel.
Fox has ordered new singing competition series The Four, announced Dana Walden and Gary Newman, chairmen and CEOs, Fox Television Group.
Walden admitted that Fox was “a little bit back on our heels” so the network wasn’t as aggressive as it could have been in getting the show back, and another network was.
“Since I’ve been here, it’s one of the cleanest formats I’ve seen”, said Wade, who joined the network earlier this year after a long run shepherding ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars”.
THE FOUR begins where most competitions end: with the four finalists. “There will be a mixture of well-known names”, Rob Wade, President of Alternative Entertainment and Specials at Fox Broadcasting Company, said of the panel, adding that the key is being “credible”, “fantastic chemistry”, and the right “marketing”. The new “Idol” then landed at ABC, which hired Katy Perry as a judge for $25 million for the first season.
At the Television Critics Association summer press tour in Beverly Hills Tuesday, Walden took the stage to announce The Four, which “is created to build career of new music star” and “cares more about star-making” than celebrity judges.