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Yahoo drops Simon Cowell's DJ show after failure of other originals

Yahoo drops Simon Cowell's DJ show after failure of other originals

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Yahoo has canceled the production of a new reality show from Simon Cowell that was originally described as an "American Idol for DJs." It's the second planned series that Yahoo has canceled this week, the first being The Pursuit, which was buzzwordily described as "Friends for the 21st century in the era of social media." Both cancellations were reported by Variety.

Yahoo wanted in on that original programming money

The series' cancelations follow Yahoo's admission earlier this month that its original content plans were failing in a very major way. It decided to take a $42 million write-down after realizing that, strangely, there wasn't going to be very much value in the sixth season of Community, nor in the unwatched 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 officer Ken Goldman. Unmentioned but presumably included is also the Paul Feig comedy Other Space. Basically, Yahoo thought it'd be able to keep these shows running, therefore making ad or licensing revenue off of them, but there clearly wasn't enough interest for that to happen.

Despite the failure of its initial TV-length content slate, Yahoo hinted that its original content might continue. "We're not saying we're not going to do these at all in the future," Goldman said. But clearly, the future is not early next year, since Yahoo has decided to silently cancel its lineup.