New reality show wants to be ‘Dancing Idol’

“So You Think You Can Dance” may have slipped in the ratings between its first and second week, but it definitely picked up four fans: Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Ryan Seacrest.

Those four are the cornerstone of Fox’s “American Idol” franchise, the one that the network apparently thought was a formulaic product easily transferable to other performing arts.

It appears that the network figured it could take four random people, change the artistic endeavor from singing to dance, tack on some embarrassingly bad performances and judges’ putdowns in a British accent, and laugh all the way to the bank.

That’s certainly how it was marketed: It’s American Idol — but with dancing! Laugh as the delusional competitors have their dreams shot down! And based on the ad hoc nature of the show thus far, where sometimes it seems like the producers are making up the rules as they go along, it’s logical to assume the network hoped the sizzle from the record-setting “Idol” season would help turn run-of-the-mill summer hamburger into steak.

That’s not exactly how it’s worked out, since the show lost about 2.4 million viewers between week 1 and week 2. What that likely says is that viewers tuned in expecting to see something with the selling points of "Idol," and tuned out once it became obvious they weren’t present. If nothing else, it illustrates that the dynamic between the “Idol” panelists isn’t as easy to replicate as the network may have thought, which might just make the stars a little more valuable come contract time.

Anyone tuning in hoping to find something as entertaining as “Idol” was bound to be disappointed, because the show falls short of its parent in several key respects.

Nigel is no Simon
A British guy, a woman with industry experience, another random guy and a host do not equal sure-fire chemistry and success.

Nigel Lythgoe may be a British guy with a big ego, and may be a producer of American Idol, but that’s where the similarities to Simon Cowell end. It looks like he saw Cowell’s success on “Idol” and figured “Hey, he was a random British guy nobody had heard of, and now he’s a superstar who makes out with Paula Abdul on camera. Why not me?”

Here’s the answer: Simon is generally caustic, sometimes funny, and usually right. Lythgoe is just cranky.

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And he’s the most memorable of the judges — in fact, he’s the only memorable judge. The fact that he’s up there with his wife and another guy who never says anything of interest shows that Lythgoe really did think he could just surround himself with anyone and make himself a star. Uh, no.

Moreover, when you can watch for 20 minutes and say, “Wow, this show could really use a Ryan Seacrest-type,” you know it has problems. Seacrest has his detractors and is easy to make fun of, but somehow he makes each "Idol" episode seem like the most dramatic, important period in the history of television. “You control their fate!” he says every week. “If your favorite gets voted off, it’s your fault!” It’s like being nagged constantly to take out the trash, but at least he’s enthusiastic about it.

Lauren Sanchez from "So You Think You Can Dance" reads her lines like she’s auditioning for voice-mail system voice-overs. Particularly in the first episode, she had a hard time conveying any excitement at all, and viewers who tuned in with great expectations may have had too hard a time staying awake to come back.

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