Dance Fever

*Dance Fever*
Dance Fever
Genre	Musical variety
Created by	Merv Griffin
Presented by	Deney Terrio (1979–1985); Adrian Zmed (1985–1987)
Narrated by	Freeman King (1979–1980); Charlie O'Donnell (1980–1987)
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of episodes	234
Production
Executive producer	Merv Griffin
Producers	Ernie Chambers (pilot, 1978), Paul Abeyta (1979–1980); Paul Gilbert (1981-1987)
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	22–24 minutes
Production companies	20th Century Fox Television; Anthony Productions; Merv Griffin Productions (1979–1984); Merv Griffin Enterprises (1984–1987)
Original release
Network	Syndication
Release	January 13, 1979 –; September 5, 1987

Dance Fever is an American musical variety series that aired weekly in syndication from January 1979 to September 1987. The series was technically created by Merv Griffin but most of the show's development on the pilot was by producer Ernest Chambers and director Dick Carson. Paul Abeyta produced the show's first two seasons which was written by Tony Garofalo. Later seasons were produced by Paul Gilbert.

Deney Terrio hosted the series until September 1985, where he was replaced by Adrian Zmed. The show's announcer for the first two years was Freeman King until September 1980 where he was replaced by Charlie O'Donnell who was the announcer on another Griffin show, Wheel of Fortune.

During Terrio's tenure as host, the show's theme was performed by a musical team called Triple "S" Connection.

Format

Each week, four dancing couples competed for a weekly cash prize of $1,000; Each couple performed their dance routine for 90-120 seconds and the celebrity judges scored them anywhere between 70 and 100 points, based on 4 categories: originality, showmanship, style, and technique. The couple with the highest average total score were the winners and advanced into the next round of competition. In the event of a tie, one set of celebrity scores was dropped in an effort to decide a winner; every fifth week was a semi-final show where those winning couples from the last four weeks competed for $5,000.

At the end of a 25-week competition, the five semi-final winners all came back to face off in the show's annual Grand Prix Finals for cash and prizes worth over $25,000 which included two brand new cars (one for each member of the winning dance team). In September 1984, the grand prize package was raised to $50,000.

Each week except for the year-end Grand Prix Finals, the show also featured a segment in which some of the top disco, pop, or R&B artists of the day would perform their latest hit.

References

^ The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Ballantine Books. 2003. p. 274. ISBN 0-345-45542-8.

External links

[1] The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Ballantine Books. 2003. p. 274. ISBN 0-345-45542-8.

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