Ice skating spin-off of Dancing with the Stars considered, despite Skating with Celebrities

ABC and BBC Worldwide are considering producing an adaptation of Dancing with the Stars that would let celebrity contestants learn how to ice skate.

Joe Adalian reports at The Wrap that the show’s “producers are discussing importing a BBC format in which celebrities train to perform splashy ice skating routines,” and while “[n]o deal has been finalized and there’s no firm timetable for when the show will air, but the project is in active development at ABC, according to two people familiar with the situation.”

Apparently, they forgot about the 2006 joke that was Fox’s Skating with Celebrities, itself an unabashed rip-off of Dancing with the Stars. Besides wrecking a marriage (that led to actual physical fighting), it was just awful—although it tragically had more viewers than arrested Development. It did lose about half its viewers in less than a month, but even then was down to just under 10 million viewers, which any network would kill for today.