Yahoo's new electronic music competition for DJs, produced by Simon Cowell, is set to debut in early 2016. The company also announced it will not move forward with The Pursuit, a traditional situation comedy it previously announced.
Simon Cowell is on a roll lately. We recently reported that he officially announced via tweet that he will be replacing Howard Stern on America's Got Talent when the show returns to NBC next summer. Cowell owns part of AGT, and his partnership with Yahoo to produce an electronic music competition has officially been scheduled with a target date for early 2016.
The show was first announced this past April and will follow in the footsteps of other talent competition shows produced by Cowell's Syco Entertainment, including America's Got Talent, The X Factor and American Idol, which is heading into its final season. Viewers will vote for the winner via Tumblr, and the champion will receive a Sony/Ultra recording contract and a headlining spot at an electronic music festival.
Meanwhile, after Yahoo made headlines with the recent announcement of a $42 million write-down related to three comedies produced for the company, including the sixth season of Dan Harmon's cult sitcom Community, which aired on NBC for its first five seasons, the company has pulled the plug on another planned sitcom it had previously announced.
The show, entitled The Pursuit, was positioned as a modern day Friends, revolving around a group of young Manhattanites trying to find their way in the world, and was set to be helmed by executive producers Scott Stuber (Ted, Role Models) and Dylan Clark (Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, The Heat), along with director and executive producer Beth McCarthy Miller (Saturday Night Live, Modern Family).
It appears as if Yahoo is cutting its losses on the comedy front, after CFO Ken Goldman admitted in the company's recent earnings call that: "We couldn't see a way to make money over time" on the three shows, which, in addition to Community, also included two original productions, Sin City Saints and Other Space. The Pursuit could still be alive, however, if another network or online platform decides to pick up the project.
