Unlike past years the American Idol 2016 final season will come to a close in April, not May as we’re used to seeing. This comes according to sources for Billboard.
We’ve seen recent efforts to shorten episodes and weekly broadcast counts, but taking things in a new direction this year production will cut off a month of the American Idol 2016 schedule’s final run in a report from Billboard.
FremantleMedia North America president of entertainment programming Trish Kinane, who shares showrunning duties with Fox executive vp David Hill, won’t confirm season 15’s truncated schedule, but she does acknowledge, “The storytelling works better in [fewer] weeks.”
The problem, surmises Kinane, is that during its heyday, “Idol was so successful [that the season] got too extended too much. There are only so many hours that viewers will devote to watching these shows, so if it is shorter this year, it will be a good thing.”
Well that’s disappointing. Billboard reports the decision was made by FOX but appears to be supported by all the players. I’m of course wondering just what FOX plans to do with a month’s gap in programming with just weeks to go before the usual season finales.
An April end to the American Idol 2016 season gives us just three months of the final run which seems like a very short span for what’s usually such a long stretch. We’ll have to wait and see just how they manage to squeeze more cuts in to the shorter time period since we already know they’re retaining things like the Showcase Round and the Top 24 (spoilers).
As soon as we have more official details on the change and how it’ll impact this year’s American Idol schedule we’ll have that information shared on the site.