Name of show
“Dance Machine”

Timeslot
ABC, Fridays 8 p.m.

Synopsis
“Dance Machine” is yet another reality dancing competition, only this one doesn’t feature celebrities or wannabe professional dancers. The contestants here are all ordinary people from a variety of backgrounds.

One contestant on tonight’s premiere is a 25-year-old circus acrobat from Monterey, Calif. Among next week’s dancers is a 70-year-old grandmother from Mexico City.

Here’s how it works: Each week six contestants battle in a series of one-on-one dance-offs, and throughout the night the dancers are eliminated by voters in the studio audience. The two remaining performers then face off to be crowned the night’s “Dance Machine,” for a cash prize of $100,000.

E! News’ Jason Kennedy hosts and DJ Rodney Perry provides the music, mainly pop hits from years past.

Outlook
If any show reeks of writers-strike-itis, “Dance Machine” is it, as a quickie-concept reality series that looks to have been green-lighted in January solely for the purpose of filling a hole in the event last season's strike went on any longer.

Why dance? Why not?

It's a hot genre, and one hard to mess up if there's music and the lights work. ABC has “Dancing with the Stars,” Fox “So You Think You Can Dance,” MTV “America’s Best Dance Crew” and Lifetime “Your Mama Don’t Dance.”

But that's about all "Machine” has going for it.

Obviously, ABC sees little in it, airing it on a Friday night, in the summer yet, and at 8 p.m.

Last week that timeslot was the berth for the first hour of the Daytime Emmy Awards, which posted a worst-ever 1.2 in adults 18-49. In the two weeks before, repeats of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” averaged a 1.3, and the prior week the Scripps National Spelling Bee averaged a 1.2.

What might keep "Machine" from being a total disaster is the light competition.

This week it faces a repeat of CBS's “Ghost Whisperer,” a repeat of NBC's “Most Outrageous Moments,” Fox's movie “XXX: State of the Union,” and what may prove its toughest competition, the first half of WWE's “Friday Night Smackdown” on the CW.

The competition next week is similarly light: NBC's U.S. Olympic swimming trials, another Fox movie, “Daddy Day Care,” reruns on CBS and "Smackdown" on the CW, though it's also July 4, a notoriously low night of TV viewership.

The buzz
There is none, nary a peep. In fact, most media people have never heard of “Dance Machine” because ABC has chosen not to tell them.

One East Coast media buyer says she’s heard it referred to as simply that new dance show, no name attached. “It’s one more dance show to add to the pile, and this one I haven’t seen,” she says.

A media director at an agency in the West says her local ABC sales manager didn’t include it in her weekly update.

“They’re not pushing it at all, and if a buyer doesn’t even know about it, that does not bode well for its long-term success,” she says. “There are a lot of strikes against it, so if it succeeds it will be a surprise.”

What critics are saying
“ABC winds down Weirdo Reality Show week with the one thing this country needs: Another freaking dance program. This one pits regular Joes against one another onstage, [so] expect a great deal of substandard popping and/or locking.” – Jay Cridlin, St. Petersburg Times

“Let’s quote from the press release: ‘Imagine a 70-year-old grandmother in a dance-off with a 25-year-old gravedigger to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller.’’ If that doesn’t grab you, I don’t know what will.” – Paige Wiser, Chicago Sun-Times

“Isn’t it time to let it go? How many dancing series do we need? ABC has a hit with ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ but apparently it isn’t enough.” – Amy Amatangelo, Boston Herald