‘The Bachelor’ Spinoff Seemingly Canceled at ABC

The song is over for The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart. The series, which aired over just six weeks from April to May 2020, has likely been canceled as a different Bachelor spin-off will be replacing it on ABC‘s schedule this year. ABC is expected to air a spin-off featuring senior citizens, as well as a new season of Bachelor in Paradise and two seasons of The Bachelorette in 2021.

Listen to Your Heart was a unique series that featured single musicians or people who work in the music business and hoped to find love through their shared interest in music. The 23 contestants performed songs solo and then as couples while going on Bachelor-style dates. The winners were Bri Stauss and Chris Watson. Chris Harrison hosted the series.

“Creatively, it stands alongside the best of what The Bachelor franchise can do. I think it probably was a little convoluted trying to mix the performance element with the love element and I think that something like the senior version is very clean,” Rob Mills, the new executive vice president of Unscripted and Alternative Entertainment at Walt Disney Television, told Deadline Monday. “I think that probably we’ll look for that going forward.”

While there will be no Listen to Your Heart this year, Mills is looking forward to its replacement, a Bachelor spin-off featuring contestants over 65. Mills said that the contestants “have great stories to tell” and the idea feels like a “home run” if they get it right. While that project is in the works, this summer’s Bachelor in Paradise is being filmed. A season of The Bachelorette featuring Katie Thurston will also air in the summer, while Michelle Young will star in a Bachelorette season this fall. Tayshia Adams and Kaitlyn Bristowe are replacing Harrison as the Bachelorette hosts.

Mills also suggested other Bachelor spinoffs could find a home on the Disney-owned Hulu. “Hulu is an exciting possibility,” he told Deadline. “You can certainly experiment with all sorts of different long-form Bachelor programming. You’re not hamstrung by running time or even standards. It’s definitely exciting. I think it’s early, but it’s certainly not something that we’re not thinking of.”

Listen to Your Heart is the latest short-lived Bachelor spin-off. Bachelor Pad ran three seasons from 2010 to 2012, while The Bachelor Winter Games aired one season in 2018 against the 2018 Winter Olympics. ABC announced The Bachelor Summer Games, which would have aired opposite NBC’s 2020 Summer Olympics coverage, but that project was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Disney has also aired spin-offs on Freeform, including a series on Ben Higgins and Lauren Bushnell in 2016.