‘Dancing with the Stars’ season 20 premiere date revealed

For all of you planning your ballroom-themed “Dancing with the Stars” viewing parties, we now have an official date for you: Monday, March 16. The long-running ABC competition is set to return with new installments; not only that, but we have some confirmation on all of the other judges / personalities.

For the second straight season, Julianne Hough has been confirmed to be a member of the judging panel, which is nice news given that her brother Derek is leaving for at least one season to perform in New York. Meanwhile, both Erin Andrews and Tom Bergeron are going to return as the hosts of the show, and now, the one thing that they have to work on is assembling a cast of great entertaining.

While it may at times be easy to cast some negativity on the series for being such a TV dinosaur at this point, the show actually had one of its best seasons commercially in the past couple of years in the fall. We attribute it mostly to them getting the casting right. While people like Alfonso Ribeiro, Janel Parrish, and Sadie Robertson are not necessarily household names in 2014-15, they are people with dedicated followings, and they ended up attracting other viewers to the show who may not necessarily watch. Pulling from classic TV, ABC Family, and reality programs seems to ultimately be the best thing for the show to do.

The reason for the later start time for the show is the same as always, as they want to ensure that the latest season of “The Bachelor” is over before starting things up with another series.

Want to get some other TV news worth dancing about in your email inbox right now? Then be sure to sign up right away for our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ABC.)