Tonight is the premiere of FOX’s new competitive singing competition called The Masked Singer.
The concept of the show is that celebrities sing and perform for a panel of judges in costume to hide their true identity. The singers have to impress to move on in the competition. There are 12 celebrities competing.
While the FOX network is excited about this new show, one Twitter user is claiming that he was the original masked singer. In a tweet posted on Twitter on December 28, 2018, the profile called @MaskedViner claimed that he had been doing something similar on Vine before the social media platform ended.
This Asian Masked Singer TV show came out in Feb 2015 (while I was doing my thing @ at the peak of my vine fame) I had 600,000 followers, 200,000,000 views & started to get media attention.
Now people are accusing fox of stealing the Asian show….& I’m just overhere like pic.twitter.com/qjNUEMijus
— THE MASKED SINGER / DOC FLY (@MaskedViner) December 28, 2018
At this point in time, it’s difficult to confirm the numbers the Twitter account is claiming as Vine is no longer active. The platform shut down in January 2017. But the person behind the account claims that he was doing his thing on Vine before the first version of this show came out in 2015.
China is believed to have been the first country to have had this kind of singing competition on television. Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and now the United States have followed suit. It’s not uncommon for countries to license out show concepts. This is commonly done with competition shows, such as The Great British Bake Off.
It’s true that FOX’s version of The Masked Singer isn’t original to America or FOX. There is an Asian version. You can see a clip below where Ryan Reynolds was revealed to be one of the performers in costume.
You can see how the American version plays out below as FOX has released a clip on what viewers can expect to see on the premiere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8EYYv9X460
At this point, the person behind The Masked Viner Twitter profile hasn’t said anything about any potential legal action, and there is no suggestion that FOX or the producers of The Masked Singer have done anything wrong or illegal.
The account holder simply mentioned their supposed stats on Twitter, letting people draw their own conclusions.
The Masked Singer airs Wednesday, January 2, at 9/8c on FOX. You can catch a special encore presentation of the first episode on Saturday, January 5 at 9/8c on FOX.