American Idol 2018: Ryan Seacrest Still Not Under Contract

American Idol 2018 is official and headed for ABC but so far the wheels aren’t too secure on this fast moving car. At this point they’ve got Katy Perry and, well, that’s about it.

Ryan Seacrest talks American Idol – Source: FOX/YouTube

It was widely expected that Idol’s permanent fixture, Ryan Seacrest, has yet to become permanently attached for the upcoming relaunch of the series. According to Variety, those talks have stalled since the announcement of Katy Perry as one of the American Idol 2018 judges.

I imagine there are lots of obstacles in many contracts, but a few of the issues being raised by Variety could definitely turn an obstacle in to a roadblock. First up is money. Now allegedly ABC budgeted around $38 million for talent and supposedly they earmarked $25 million of that for Katy Perry… Huhwhat? That would leave about $13 million to bring in Ryan Seacrest and presumably two other judges. Yeah.

So say they try to give Ryan Seacrest $10 million, an amount Variety reports, to host American Idol 2018. He’d be there at 40% of what Katy Perry is being paid and would leave just $3M for the other two judges. At that point they’d have to be pretty junior in the musicsphere, right? Ugh.

Variety also brings up the issue that we’ve discussed and that’s location conflicts. Seacrest just moved out to New York per his new contract with ABC. Idol is going to be filmed in LA. So there we go again. That one seems like the none-starter to me, but apparently ABC has been working hard on this and continues to do so.

Really I think they should have secured Ryan first with whatever cost and then got us some decent judges. Katy Perry isn’t worth $25 million a year. Simon Cowell made north of that for a season, but come on, we can’t compare them for their impact on a series like Idol.

What a mess. Come on ABC, please pull this together and get us American Idol in 2018 with it ready to go and all the important pieces, like Ryan Seacrest.