Competition series Alter Ego starts on Fox on Wednesday, Sept. 22, enjoying a healthy lead-in from the sixth season premiere of The Masked Singer. The shows are somewhat similar in that both feature contestants singing at something of a remove from the audience, judges and viewer — Masked Singer contestants in masks and costumes, and Alter Ego hopefuls creating an avatar to perform, the singers’ moves depicted by motion capture technology. 

Nick Lachey won season five of The Masked Singer. He’s a judge on Alter Ego, along with Alanis Morissette, will.i.am and Grimes. 

“I was already part of the Fox family,” he told B+C/Multichannel News. “When they were looking for panelists for Alter Ego, someone was nice enough to think of me.”

The quirky concept behind Alter Ego grabbed him immediately. “It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” he said. “There’s a taste of it on The Masked Singer, where you perform behind the facade of a character. But the way Alter Ego combines the artistry of the music and the mind-blowing technology of avatars, I’ve never seen.”

Lachey is lead singer of 98 Degrees and has four solo albums. He co-hosts Love Is Blind on Netflix with wife Vanessa and previously hosted The Sing-Off on NBC. 

He described winning The Masked Singer as “incredibly satisfying.” Lachey mentioned the extreme amount of work that went into his performances. “I tell my kids, it’s not about winning or losing, it’s, did you do your best? I tried to tell that to myself, as a man in a Piglet costume.”

Watching the judges on The Masked Singer — Robin Thicke, Ken Jeong, Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger — gave Lachey some pointers for his new role. He said each Alter Ego panelist brings a unique musical perspective. “I like to think it’s four of the most easygoing, laid back people,” he said. “The chemistry happened pretty early on.” 

Lachey acknowledges the challenge of a show launching in 2021, with so much competition. 

“Alter Ego is so unique and so unlike anything that’s come before,” he noted. “When you do a truly memorable thing, I think people will find it.” 

A&E Network said it ordered a 10-half-hour docuseries from Leftfield Pictures about Nick and Drew Lachey opening a bar in their hometown of Cincinnati. With the working title Lachey's Bar, the show is slated to premiere in 2015, and production is set to begin immediately.

The brothers were in the pop group 98 Degrees and Nick Lachey was in the MTV reality series Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica with his first wife, Jessica Simpson. Nick Lachey, who this past spring hosted VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live, splits his time between New York and Los Angeles with his wife, Vanessa, and Drew Lachey returned to Ohio years ago, A&E said. The brothers both own homes in the city, next door to each other. Executive producers for ITV Studios-owned Leftfield Pictures are Brent Montgomery, David George, Jordana Hochman, Will Nothacker and Jason Hollis. Executive producers for A&E Network are Drew Tappon, Shelly Tatro, Dave Mace and Sean Gottlieb. Nick Lachey and Drew Lachey also are executive producers.

Lachey's Bar was initially in development for A+E Networks outlet FYI, the lifestyle network that replaced BIO. The brothers discussed the show with Lifeminute.tv at the AETN upfront in June. A&E Network is already home to a docuseries about celebrity brothers and restaurateurs Mark and Donnie Wahlberg, whose show Wahlburgers returned for a second season on Aug. 13 and drew 2.037 million viewers on a live plus same day basis, per Nielsen, down from 2.3 million-plus for its season-one finale.