(EndPlay Staff Reports) – FOX is giving the dating show experience a new spin with “The Choice,” a new reality show to debut on June 7.
It is also FOX’s way of telling NBC it can sit and spin with its singing competition “The Voice.”
Celebrities will be the ones looking for love on “The Choice” as they compete to find it among a group of singles. Each show will feature four bachelor celebrities potentially battling it out for the women’s affection in front of a live audience.
“We wanted to put a new spin on the dating game show that gives celebrities the choice of a lifetime and the chance to prove you really shouldn’t judge a book by its cover,” Mike Darnell, president of Alternative Entertainment for FOX Broadcasting Company, stated in a press release.
The celebrities will have to depend on information their potential suitors provide during the first “blind” round as they discuss their passions, likes and dislikes.
Celebrity bachelors will then swing their chairs toward the ones they choose based solely on that information provided. If more than one “pulls the handle” towards the same woman, the celebrities get to take turns trying to convince her which dating poll to enter.
It continues through a speed round, during which each celebrity has three choices, and a final round, when it will be down to the final two.
There will be one episode that will feature four celebrity bachelorettes instead of bachelors.
Entertainment Weekly reported that the new series has a very strong resemblance to “The Voice,” which features four celebrity judges seated on spinning chairs. Unlike “The Choice,” “The Voice” is a singing competition featuring contestants in a blind audition.
New York Times’ Media Decoder blog stated that it’s another example of FOX “ripping off/having fun with some other network’s successful reality show,” which it alleges is a tradition of Darnell.
Darnell answered back that there are certain charms to his dating show idea, such as the chairs working better than the wall in “The Dating Game.”
The Times stated that Darnell also acknowledged he likes a little “competitive tweaking.”
“And I’m never going to change,” he said.
“The Choice,” hosted by Cat Deeley, will run for five weeks at 9 p.m. ET Thursdays starting on June 7.
