NBCUniversal Licenses ‘Dance Your A** Off’ To China
4:41 AM PDT 5/29/2012 by Stuart Kemp
Chinese broadcaster ZheJiang Satellite TV snaps up format rights to produce 12 episodes of the weight loss dance show.
LONDON – NBCUniversal’s weight-loss dance challenge format Dance Your A** Off has booked its passage to China.
The company has sealed a deal with Chinese broadcaster ZheJiang Satellite TV for the format with the satcaster set to produce 12 episodes. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
Dance Your A** Off is a show where men and women who struggle with their weight compete in a dance challenge to “unleash their inner thin.”
The Chinese broadcaster will air the show on Sunday evenings at 10pm, with a rollout scheduled for later this year. The show originally premiered on Oxygen in the U.S. in 2009. This is the format’s fourth version to air internationally.
Danish and South African versions of the program aired in 2010, and an Estonian version broadcast earlier this year. Dance is also under license in Italy and optioned in Germany.
NBCUniversal International senior vp formats and production Yvonne Pilkington said: “Through the support of our local representative, Linfield Ng, China and the wider Asian region is becoming a very active market for us. Our mix of gameshow formats from dating to cookery to big production primetime shows offers Asian broadcasters a diverse menu of choices to fit their audiences.”
Du Fang, TV vice controller of ZheJiang Satellite Channel, added: “ZheJiang is excited to bring Danceto our audience. Not only is the format entertaining but there is also a positive message that will resonate with our viewers. NBCUniversal have been terrific partners in helping us adapt the show for the Chinese audience.”
‘Big Bang Theory’ Star Jim Parsons is Gay, By the Way
12:26 PM PDT 5/23/2012 by Seth Abramovitch
Could the casual reference to his 10-year relationship mark a new era in how same-sex-loving celebrities acknowledge their personal lives?
Jim Parsons, the lanky, Texas-born actor who has won two Emmys and a Golden Globe award for playing persnickety genius Sheldon Cooper on CBS’s The Big Bang Theory, acknowledges that he is gay and in a 10-year relationship, the New York Times reveals.
But blink and you may have missed it: The information is buried towards the end of the 1,800 word profile — which focuses mostly on Parsons’ lauded stage work in Broadway revivals of The Normal Heart and, now, Harvey — and doesn’t even contain a direct quote from Parsons himself.
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“The Normal Heart resonated with him on a few levels,” theTimes‘ Patrick Healy writes. “Mr. Parsons is gay and in a 10-year relationship, and working with an ensemble again onstage was like nourishment, he said.”
Whether or not this constitutes a “coming out” for the popular TV star seems to be a topic for debate. Some industry and online chatter today has argued that Parsons was never really “in,” openly and matter-of-factly addressing his relationship whenever it came up in his daily life and work. And it’s not the first time a reference to his sexuality has been made in a print publication. (That honor would go to Antenna magazine, which folded shop earlier this year, Parsons gracing the final cover.)
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But compared to other primetime stars who identify as gay — take Modern Family‘s Jesse Tyler Ferguson, for example, who has been tireless in his vocal support for same-sex marriage rights — there’s no denying that Parsons has been extremely quiet on the topic.
If anything, the news marks what could be a new chapter in the evolution of the celebrity “coming out” story. Unlike the old-school approach — the magazine-cover-route followed by a string of “revealing” TV interviews, a method trailblazed by the likes of Ellen DeGeneres and later mimicked by everyone from Lance Bass to Neil Patrick Harris — the new method stealthily embeds the personal information in a larger piece on the “work.”
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Credit Zachary Quinto, another in-demand gay actor straddling both Broadway and Hollywood, with having forged the template: In late-2011, the Star Trek and American Horror Story star gave an interview to New York magazine, ostensibly about his performance in another New York theater revival with gay themes — Tony Kushner‘s Angels in America. Four paragraphs into the piece, the crucial clause found its way into a sentence:
“And at the same time, as a gay man, it made me feel like there’s still so much work to be done, and there’s still so many things that need to be looked at and addressed.”
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