ABC to keep ‘Dancing with the Stars’ on twice a year despite ‘All-Stars’ blunder

The ballroom battles are going to live on for quite a while longer. Despite “Dancing with the Stars: All-Stars” becoming more or less the equivalent of a 5 from Len Goodman in the ratings (primarily in the 18-49 demographic), ABC executive Paul Lee said during the network’s panel at TCA on Thursday that the plans are still to continue to air the competition twice a year, in both the spring and the fall.

So why did the show fare so much worse this season? The easy answer here is merely that it turned out that viewers much preferred watching a mixture of bad and good dancing rather than people who are talented in the craft all of the time. There’s also something else that has been presumably lost in the shuffle a little bit here: that when you have a new cast, you often get new viewers thanks to people who are fans of theirs watching for the first time. With a returning cast, you have fans who are a little less enthusiastic since they have all seen them dance before. Therefore, what you are left with are a mixture of diehard supporters and people who watch the show for the show, and not for the celebrities.

The biggest issue that Lee and “Dancing with the Stars” executive producer Conrad Green need to focus on right now is of a youth movement: this is one of the network’s oldest-skewing shows, and while it is important to keep those viewers, advertisers largely loook at people between the ages mentioned at the top of this article. This means possibly looking for news places for stars, such as maybe an up-and-coming solo artist, actors on successful cable shows (anyone want to see Shay Mitchell do the samba?), or athletes that you would not expect. (Personally, we’d love to see Michael Phelps and maybe another popular Olympian from 2012 in Lolo Jones.)

Ultimately, we do still think that the best solution for the show is to go to once a year, largely because it gives viewers time to miss it. Great Britain does this with “Strictly Come Dancing,” and it is one of the nation’s most-watched franchises.

If you want to check out some more pleasant “Dancing with the Stars” news pertaining to Len, be sure to visit the link here.

Photo: ABC