Andy DehnartAddressing the failure of Dancing with the Stars spin-off Skating with the Stars, ABC’s entertainment president threatened/teased us by calling its premiere season its “first season,” as if ABC might actually attempt a second.
Earlier this week, Paul Lee told TV critics that he thinks the show failed because “we were probably too similar,” and added, “maybe we put them too close together, or we made something whose DNA was really too close together even though the brief before going in there was, ‘Hey, we have this fabulous, culturally defining show. We’d love to extend it.'”
He said that it premiered so close to Dancing with the Stars that the comparisons hurt Skating with the Stars. “You were comparing a show at the height of its power, with a
fabulous cast, with the first season of a show that hadn’t yet gotten that level of casting and that level of self-confidence, and that was a difficult comparison,” he said.