Skating With Celebrities

[ClevelandDancer]

http://www.fox.com/skating/

Someone posted the schedule on another message board, though I can't find the source. Here's the cut and paste:


SKATING WITH CELEBRITIES Premieres Wednesday, January 18; Moves to Mondays on January 23

MONDAYS
8:00-9:00 PM SKATING WITH CELEBRITIES (as of Jan. 23)


Someone, pass the cheese! :lol:

[Nicki]

Thanks for the head's up. I'm loking forward to seeing this.

[SoNaoWat?]

Aw geez! You've gotta be kidding me. Why would people like Kerrigan, Hamilton and Browning be putting their names in with something like this?? I have a message to send to all the sports managers of all the networks everywhere:

There are skating fans out there. There really, REALLY are. We are here. We will watch skating if it's on. So make it worth our time! Put on a real competition, or a real show, or something. We'll watch. But stop with this celebs/professionals theme. Dancing, singing, skating...it's enough already!

Chant with me, everybody...."We Want Real Skating! We Want Real Skating!" :roll:

[iceskaterdawn]

I attended several tapings of this show, and I was quite surprised at the level of skating that was done. I can't wait to see it when it airs on TV next month!

[flippet]

Aw geez! You've gotta be kidding me. Why would people like Kerrigan, Hamilton and Browning be putting their names in with something like this?? I have a message to send to all the sports managers of all the networks everywhere:

There are skating fans out there. There really, REALLY are. We are here. We will watch skating if it's on. So make it worth our time! Put on a real competition, or a real show, or something. We'll watch. But stop with this celebs/professionals theme. Dancing, singing, skating...it's enough already!

Chant with me, everybody...."We Want Real Skating! We Want Real Skating!" :roll:

I don't know....normally, I don't watch 'reality' TV--no AI, no FF, definitely no Survivor. But I found myself watching and really getting into 'So You Think You Can Dance?' I probably would have liked the dancing with the stars one as well. So I think I'll love this. It will be interesting to see the work that goes into the learning and performance, not just the final (often cheesy, given some skating 'events' in the past) result. Skating on TV has really dropped off lately--something like this may be just the thing to spark some interest among the 'masses' again.

[SoNaoWat?]

You know, I think you have a point! The idea is to get the networks to find things that they think will appeal to the masses, and then maybe there will be more demand for skating and eventually there will be less cheese-fluff, huh? I guess we can always keep our fingers crossed. I shouldn't judge stuff before I watch it. I just thought "Dave Coulier and Nancy Kerrigan? Not sure I wanna see that." I never watched the other 'Celeb' shows, either. Guess I should just give it a shot.

[jazzpants]

So did anyone else see the commercial for the show on TV? Kinda sickening to find one of the skater needing snitches on the head during practice. 8O

[Aimless]

You know, I think you have a point! The idea is to get the networks to find things that they think will appeal to the masses, and then maybe there will be more demand for skating and eventually there will be less cheese-fluff, huh? I guess we can always keep our fingers crossed. I shouldn't judge stuff before I watch it. I just thought "Dave Coulier and Nancy Kerrigan? Not sure I wanna see that." I never watched the other 'Celeb' shows, either. Guess I should just give it a shot.

I'm not sure if this theory works. I hope it does. If you feed 'em Cheez-whiz, maybe they'll eventually demand Camembert, Roquefort, Saga Blue? Or sell a Kincaid and maybe they'll decide that art is a good thing and get something better next time? I really hope you're right, but it goes the other way too--the lowest common denominator. I admit, I'll watch almost ANYTHING skating related. My standards are very low.

[Teenes]

SoNaoWhat - you might be around, but the skating fans who will tune into "real" skating definitely aren't. TV ratings, audience attendance at shows, etc...they all reflect a real decline in the number of people watching skating. It's unfortunate, but it's a reality, and skating, like everything else, is run with money.

I was surprised to see Kurt and the others sign on to this as well. But apparently Scott Hamilton thought this would be a good opportunity for skating, so was determined to get involved with it. And my guess is, once Scott was involved, they found it a lot easier to get other skaters involved as well...

I also attended a taping. Those celebrities actually worked really hard with the skaters to prepare for this show. Kurt told me that it was fun, but twice as much work as he'd originally anticipated. And the results? Might surprise you...(might surprise me too, b/c I didn't see the finale ;)).

[jazzpants]

I would be very curious to know what were some of the requisite skills the celebrities (well, the non-skating ones) needed to be on the show. Obviously, they have to be able to skate around the rink...

[Isk8NYC]

Hey, Scott Hamilton looks great in the promo video!

I'm going to watch this, just for fun. If it sends some more adults to the rink, so be it!

[CanuckSk8r]

So did anyone else see the commercial for the show on TV? Kinda sickening to find one of the skater needing snitches on the head during practice. 8O

What I found surprising is that Lloyd Eisler is the male half of the duo in the airplane that goes bad - very bad.

[flippet]

SoNaoWhat - you might be around, but the skating fans who will tune into "real" skating definitely aren't. TV ratings, audience attendance at shows, etc...they all reflect a real decline in the number of people watching skating. It's unfortunate, but it's a reality, and skating, like everything else, is run with money.


Yeah, it's too bad that money decides...because if a ticket for a show or a competition wasn't so darned expensive, I'd go to a lot more of them! Or, if they were regularly held in the Midwest, so that it wouldn't ALSO require a plane ticket and hotel room!!! :evil: And I watch less skating on TV because it is so cheesy---when you can see the skaters are just phoning it in, why bother? Now...show me something that a skater's put some real thought into (choreographically speaking), and I'll watch till the cows come home. Forget the jumps--make it art, or make it fun, I don't care, just take it seriously and quit phoning it in.

Like I said above, this interests me precisely because it would be difficult--both for the 'celebs' and for the skaters trying to actually get something accomplished in the limited time. To work with a newbie takes focus--you can't really phone that in.

[Gayl]

(Has been forever since I posted here, had to re-register. Glad to be back. My favorites are Yagudin, Alexander Abt, and Weir.)

I have a favor to ask. I volunteer to write for an online reality show commentary website called Reality TV Calendar. The site needs someone to volunteer to recap and provide comments for the show "Skating with Celebrities". I am too busy to do it and no else so far has volunteered to recap the show.

I am a huge fan of real skating and I would love for someone who understands and loves real skating to do the recap. I read the posts in this thread and I was so thrilled that people here share my concerns about this show. The other reality show online commentaries sites will most likely use average people to recap the show. The readers on the website are average people and it would also be a great way to reach average people to explain the difference between fluff and what is real.

I hope it ok to post the link if any one is interested. It is volunteer, no professional writing background is needed, just to be able to provide the recap in a friendly and professional manner by noon the next day. The earlier the recap is in to the editor, the better since people will check for a recap early the next morning. It would be first come, first gets it. Another staff writer volunteered already to write the scoreboard for the show.

My name is Gayl Killough. I have no connection with the site other than I volunteer to write recaps and commentaries for it. Ron, the editor is a friendly guy. If you want more information,

The overall site is www.realitytvcalendar.com

and the page on Skating with Celebrities is
http://www.realitytvcalendar.com/shows/skatingcelebrities.html

[Schmeck]

Too bad they didn't get Patrick Swayze (sp?) in on this - the guy was actually a figure skater at one time, as a kid! Don't know if it was ice dance or pairs, but they mentioned it on his bio on some show I watched this week.

They've been showing a fair number of commercials for this, so hopefully it will be a worthy show??? Nothing like a truly bad show highlighting figure skating to make the sport even less respected, sigh...

[Canskater]

I believe Patrick Swayze was a roller skater.

[Schmeck]

he did roller skating, but also did ice skating - they had a photo of him in his tv bio, and he had ice skates on.