9-1-1’s move to ABC was a surprising one, especially since the first responder drama has been Fox’s top-rated series for six seasons. Even so, with the financial factors weighing in, it just wasn’t enough to keep the Ryan Murphy series on the network. Fans were bewildered by the announcement, and they weren’t the only ones. Star Oliver Stark, who has portrayed Buck since the show’s beginning, spoke to Variety about the network switch. While they didn’t get word until just a couple of hours before news broke, they did know a bit about what was going on, which makes it a little better to come to terms with.
“We didn’t get official word until the day that it was announced,” Stark revealed. “We found out a couple of hours before the press release came out, which isn’t really a big deal. I don’t think day-to-day it’s going to make much of a difference to production. So it’s not something that I feel like we needed much of a warning about. There have been rumors for a while swirling around that something like this might happen. So it’s not like we were completely in the dark or anything like that. And I think, in some senses, it’s exciting.”
“Fox has been a really great home for us and made us feel very welcome and really fostered a collaborative working environment for us over the past six years,” Stark continued. “But there’s also a possibility of now switching over to ABC, opening up a new audience for us and exposing us to a new audience and possibly reinvigorating the show. So I think everybody’s very thankful for what Fox has done, but excited to see what the future holds for us on ABC.”
While the switch to ABC will take some time to get used to, especially since 9-1-1 won’t be part of the fall lineup, there are endless possibilities of what could happen on ABC. They could have a bigger budget, storylines they might not have had the opportunity to do on Fox, and possibly bringing in more characters; who knows what could happen with the 118. This also gives 9-1-1 a chance to thrive amongst a decent company of procedurals and medical dramas, whereas, on Fox, there were only a few of those.
