Celebrity Duets

Celebrity Duets was an American reality television show, of the progressive game-show type, which combined celebrities of different backgrounds with professional singers in a weekly elimination competition.

The show was a take-off of the Australian series program It Takes Two and its predecessor, the BBC's Just the Two of Us; however, unlike the British and Australian shows, the celebrities sang with different partners each week. Indeed, Celebrity Duets was meant to be transmitted in the UK first, under the title Star Duets. But the BBC bought the format before Simon Cowell got to produce it on ITV. There was even court action, which the BBC won. Thus, Star Duets never came into production.

The show debuted on Fox, with a 2-hour premiere installment on August 29, 2006. It then moved to its normal Thursday timeslot the following week, and stayed there until its season finale on September 29, 2006.

Simon Cowell of American Idol and The X Factor fame created the program, and Wayne Brady of Whose Line Is It Anyway? fame, himself a singer and the former host of a variety show on ABC, hosted the show. The judges were renowned composer and producer David Foster, rock and roll pioneer Little Richard, and singer Marie Osmond.

For the season, the series averaged 3.8 million viewers, making it the lowest-rated Fox series of the entire season, and indeed one of the lowest-rated programs on any network for the season that year.[1] This ratings failure precluded any production of a second season.