Tuning In to TV

Encore for ‘Dance’

Oxygen has picked up a second season of “Dance Your Ass Off,” with Magical Elves production company on board to produce.

In its first year, the series was the most-watched freshman series in the cable channel’s history, with an average of more than 1 million total viewers and 494,000 among the 18-to-49 demographic, Variety reports.

The show pairs an overweight contestant with a dance partner, and the two earn a combined score. The team with the lowest score is eliminated each week.

The new season will air next year, Variety says.

Magical Elves is the shingle behind Bravo’s culinary sensation “Top Chef,” and it produced “Project Runway” during that show’s run on Bravo.

Oprah gets ‘Life’

Oprah Winfrey will lend her voice talents to Discovery Channel’s upcoming 11-part series, “Life,” Multichannel.com reports.

Set to premiere in March, the series - more than four years in the making - reveals some of the most spectacular, bizarre and fascinating behaviors that living things have devised to thrive. Many of them were captured for the first time using the latest in state-of-the-art high-definition filming techniques.

From strange creatures - such as the star-nosed mole that hunts underwater using bubbles to smell its prey - to epic spectacles - including millions of fruit bats darkening the Zambian sky - each episode tells stories of survival with drama, humor and suspense.

Miss Winfrey also is teaming with Discovery Communications on OWN: the Oprah Winfrey Network, a joint venture service that will succeed Discovery Life network next year.

Germans avoid ‘30’

In its Sunday night debut on German television, NBC’s Emmy-winning sitcom “30 Rock” scored a 0.0 rating - meaning fewer than 5,000 viewers tuned in, the Hollywood Reporter notes.

The debut was below even the lowest forecasts of broadcaster ZDFNeo. The digital niche channel had made “30 Rock” the flagship in its relaunch, promising more cutting-edge programming for a younger demographic.

But no one, young or old, tuned in Sunday. The BBC comedy “Taking the Flak” also failed to register on the ratings scale, and even the action drama “The Sentinel” (2006) barely made a dent, reaching just 30,000 viewers.

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