Simon Cowell has had remarkable success with his music reality television shows, but his latest attempt to branch out has fallen flat before it even got on the air. Yahoo has axed Cowell's latest Ultimate DJ competition, which was billed as an American Idol-styled program, where EDM DJs would compete against each other live to try and win over fans and judges and win a contract with Sony Music Entertainment.
The news was first reported by Variety. The move to axe the program comes pretty last minute as the Syco Entertainment produced program would be cut alongside several other original programs that were either in development or being put back on the air. Ultimate DJ was originally slated to go on air sometime early next year, but now all plans have been nixed. Talk of the competition has been around for some time, including when it was formally announced in April when then CMO Kathy Savitt introduced the live series with Cowell.
Last month Yahoo announced it would take a $42 million write-down for the third quarter after realizing there wasn't much value in Community or Sin City Saints. "What we concluded is [that] certain of our original video content, we couldn't see a way to make money over time. I'm thinking of Community, I'm thinking of Sin City Saints and so forth," said Yahoo chief financial officer Ken Goldman via The Verge.
Cowell's DJ competition show seemed doomed from the start. There was little to no support from the DJ community, who would have been needed to provide judges and backing for some of these new DJs.
Potential fans online did not seem to be on board with the concept either, which could have helped make this decision easy for Yahoo.
