‘Dancing with the Stars’ finds new showrunner with ‘America’s Got Talent’ alum
“Dancing with the Stars” no longer has to worry about its creative direction moving forward. In what could be seen as a move that the competition is not going anywhere, the ABC show has formerly replaced Conrad Green as showrunner / executive producer moving forward past this season with Rob Wade.
If you have heard Rob’s name before, it is probably no coincidence given that he previously held significant titles on both “America’s Got Talent” and also “The X Factor.” Therefore, he is already very familiar with how to make live reality competitions work. Granted, “Dancing with the Stars” is still a very complicated beast; it’s live every week, and you have packages that typically focus more on comedy and fun than they do sob stories or forcing you to get to know people you’ve never heard of.
The reason why there is probably no reason to worry about the show’s future for now is pretty simple: After losing a lot of viewers and demo ratings in the fall, and for the past few seasons, the show has at least somewhat stabilized. It’s not falling at the rate anymore of “American Idol” and “The Voice,” with “How I Met Your Mother” gone, it easily competes for a better position on Mondays overall in the 18-49 demographic. It is still a beast in total viewers, as well, drawing more of those than any other Monday show. So long as it keeps above a 2.0 in the demo, we don’t really see ABC minding too much that it skews old.
Despite some viewer complaints, most of the changes for this season have worked out well. We still miss the good and bad that came with the live orchestra performing every song, but we haven’t felt like Erin Andrews is any worse than Brooke Burke-Charvet. We just feel like we are predisposed to hate almost anyone alongside the amazingness that is Tom Bergeron.
Do you think that “Dancing with the Stars” still has a long future ahead of it? Let us know your thoughts below, and dance over here to get some further TV updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter.