Puttin' on the Hits

Host
Allen Fawcett
Broadcast
Syndication (Weekly): 9/22/1984 – 7/2/1988
Packagers
Dick Clark Productions Chris Bearde Productions
Distrbutor
MCA Television

"It's Puttin' on the Hits, the show that makes you the star you always wanted to be with our host Allen Fawcett and our celebrity judges (insert two celebrity judges) and (insert one celebrity judge). Puttin' on the Hits is brought to you in part by (insert sponsor) and (insert sponsor). And now, here's the host of Puttin' on the Hits, Allen Fawcett!"

Puttin' on the Hits was a music/variety competition show that featured amateur acts lip-synching to popular songs way before Lip Sync Battle with celebrities 31 years later.

Premise[]

Contestants would often dress up in costumes and use props to make their act more outrageous. This varied from a seemingly severed head singing "I Ain't Got Nobody" to an Aretha Franklin drag act using couch cushions for breasts. Other acts were more conservative and placed emphasis on performance.

The competition as it was conducted as many other televised performance contest (e.g. Star Search) were. Each act was judged by a panel of three rotating celebrity judges week after week based on their appearances, song choice and lip-synch ability with a total of 90 points being the maximum value an act could score. To achieve that, an act would have to receive 10 points in each of the three categories from all three judges. The act with the highest score at the end of the show won $1,000. They also advanced to the semi-finals, worth $5,000, and after that the season-ending championship show (dubbed as the "Grand Final") worth $25,000 to the winning act.

In the fourth and final season, cash prizes were awarded to two winners with the first place winner still receiving $1,000 and the second place winner winning $500 with both advancing to the semi-finals held every fourth week for $5,000 followed by the season-ending Grand Final for $25,000.

The fourth season and the series ended in May 1988 with a "Super Final" competition show where the four Grand Final winners were invited back to compete for an additional $25,000 and the title of "All-Time world lip-sync champion".

Trivia[]

The show's title is a parody of the 1929 Irving Berlin (and later covered by Taco in 1983 54 years later) song Puttin' on the Ritz.

The show grew out of lip-syncing contests created and developed by Wm. "Randy" Wood, who in 1982 had realized that his contest had grown so popular that he needed to stage them on a national scale. The planning process eventually grew into Puttin' on the Hits, which he served as consulting producer.

Allen Fawcett, veteran soap actor (The Edge of Night & General Hospital) and Broadway star (Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), wrote and hosted the four year hit series which produced 134 half hour shows.

Chris Bearde (best known for creating The Gong Show alongside Chuck Barris) and Dick Clark (best known for hosting Pyramid and creating Greed, among other things) were both the executive producers of the series. Clark died in 2012 due to a heart attack.

Dick Clark's son, Richard A. Clark produced the show while MCA-TV served as the distributor.

The show has been credited with launching the careers of the 1990's R&B group Troop and Jazzmun, a drag performer who can be seen in many contemporary television shows.

Kato Kaelin (best known for being a witness during the infamous 1994-1995 O.J. Simpson trial) was once a contestant on the show's third season performing the 1967 song "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf.