It’s official! Dancing with the Stars will NOT be cancelled. The series is set to return to TV this fall.
The news comes out of today’s (Feb 5) Disney/ABC day at the Television Critics Association winter tour in Pasadena. New ABC entertainment president Karey Burke told the crowd of assembled reporters that the show will “definitely be returning in the fall.”
As far as the decision to skip a spring cycle for the first time in franchise history, Burke said, “That decision was made before I got here.” Eep. ABC’s decision last year to reboot American Idol is the reason Dancing with the Stars has been cut back. Idol airs on Sundays and many Mondays in the spring.
It’s worth noting that the executives who made the decision to put Idol on the schedule are no longer with Disney. American Idol is an expensive show to produce–likely more expensive than DWTS. I suspect Idol will need to keep ratings close to last season’s numbers–AT LEAST–in order for ABC to order a third season. In the meantime, Disney has already lopped off two Mondays from the schedule to accommodate a longer season of The Bachelor. The current Bachelor season recently overtook America’s Got Talent: The Champions in the ratings–earning a 1.8 in the demo. Whether Idol can garner similar numbers remains to be seen.
Dancing with the Stars aired a 4 week athletes season last spring, and skipped this spring cycle altogether. When asked if Dancing with the Stars could become a twice yearly series again, Burke said, “They’re coming in soon to talk about their plans for the fall, and we’ll discuss it then.”
Both the Athletes season and last fall’s controversial full cycle posted low ratings for DWTS. It didn’t help that the eventual winner of the fall cycle–radio personality and American Idol mentor Bobby Bones posted the lowest judges scores of his three fellow finalists. Fans were pretty riled up about that and are looking for changes on how the competition is scored.
And who could forget Dancing with the Stars: Juniors, which also aired last fall! (I almost did…). That series also garnered low ratings. I’ll be surprised if it returns to the schedule.
