PODCAST #420 – INTERVIEW WITH JOURNALIST KRISTYN BURTT TRANSCRIPT
? You are listening to the Reality Steve podcast with your host, Reality Steve. He’s got all the latest info and behind the scenes juice on Grant’s upcoming season of The Bachelor and interviewing some of your favorite reality stars. Now here’s Reality Steve.
What’s up everybody. Welcome to podcast number four, host reality. Steve, all for tuning in on this Thursday. Big day today in podcast world for reality. Steve, as you know, Thursdays get three podcasts coming your way. Podcast number 420 is someone I told you is going to be coming on and that is journalist Kristen Burtt as we do a final wrap up of Dancing with the Stars and the season she covered it.
She predicted the order of the final five the week before the finale and we talk about some of the changes that we think could be made to the judging panel. Is there going to ever go back to a two Dancing with the Stars seasons? In a calendar year, she talks about the bromance, or excuse me, not the bromances, the showmances this season, Brooks and Gleb, Jen and Sasha, she gives her thoughts on it, and a lot more, so a great talk with Kristen Burt, and we’ll get to that momentarily.
Now, to start off, since it’s Thursday, I told you earlier this week, there’s going to be some more clips you’re going to be seeing of this video, of today’s show. On Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, whether I get around to doing it on my Tik TOK is a different story, but definitely doing it on my Instagram reels and definitely will be adding it to my Instagram shorts.
Just anywhere from 30 to 90 second clips of this interview. I’ll be putting it. On my stories and whatnot and IG reels, YouTube shorts, just something to add, do it, change the graphics a little bit on the YouTube channel, but still made sure that in the picture on the YouTube thumbnail, you get to see what shirt I’m wearing.
It is a shocker Beverly Hills, 90210 related shirt this week. So you can check that out. But, That’s coming. You’re just going to get more. You’re going to be seeing more clips of things from the Thursday interview. Haven’t decided if we’re ever going to get into that with daily roundup and or. The sports daily, but for right now, every week, when I post the podcast, when it goes up on my YouTube channel at 9 15 a.
m. Eastern time, this one, number four 20 with Kristen, when it goes up at 9 15 a. m. Eastern time on my YouTube channel, it’ll be in your podcast feed at that point. Once it’s up, then I will be releasing extra clips from the show on some of the social channels that you follow. So. Just be on the lookout for that.
I think it just adds a little bit to it. You could see some of the things and kind of brings you there and whatnot. So if you do see those in your Instagram search history, if you see it in reels, like it, leave a comment. If you haven’t subscribed, subscribe. I don’t know if you can subscribe through reels.
I don’t think you can. I’m still learning about reels. Anyway, you’re just going to see extra clips. So have fun with that. Daily roundup was posted a couple hours ago. Talk about survivor and the challenge yesterday started seeing it a lot on my Instagram stories. We see it every year around the beginning of December.
You’ll know what I’m talking about. When you listen to the podcast. Also Courtney Stodden got married. Remember her? Remember that hot mess express? Yeah, she’s married now. Again. Remember the first time she was married?
We all do. To the dude from Lost. He had a part in Lost, I wouldn’t say. He was one of the main dudes in Lost. But the story wasn’t, Oh, wow, she married a guy from the TV show Lost. No. The story was she was 16 and he was 51 and they acted like it was normal. It wasn’t. And then she disappeared. I mean, seriously, until I saw this story that Courtney Stodden got married, I didn’t even know what happened to her.
I haven’t heard her name in 10 years or however long it was since she was married to Doug Hutchinson. I, if you would have told me that Courtney Stodden was no longer alive, I would have been like, oh yeah, I think I remember hearing about that. Alive and well and married just recently to some dude. I talk about it on the Daily Roundup.
Go check that out. Anyway, this podcast is brought to you by. Prolon by El Nutra. There is a nutrition plan that doesn’t just help you lose weight, but it’s actually been shown to lower your biological age score. And that’s Prolon by El Nutra. And here’s the craziest part about it. It’s a fast that includes food.
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She is a journalist for, she knows you saw a lot of her dance with the stars coverage, frequent guest on Cheryl Burke’s sex lies and spray tans podcast. This is going to be her second time on this one. We’re going to do a dance with the stars wrap up here. It is Kristen Burke. Kristen, how are you doing?
Good to see you. So the first thing I want to talk about. Right off the bat. I mentioned it. I think the night before the finale or that morning on my Monday on my Wednesday morning podcast last week. Hey, everyone. Maybe it was the next day. Maybe it was Thursday. I was like, Hey, everyone, Kristen Bert, former podcast guest when asked on Cheryl Burke’s podcast last week to rank her top five ended up nailing it.
Got all five in a row correctly. Did you have inside information on this? Or I mean, You nailed it. What made you do it from, you know, Danny fifth and then Steven fourth and then having Chandler third and Alona second and Joey first, was that just a complete guess? I mean, where’d you get this from?
Honestly, there was no inside information. This was just my prediction based on the narrative of the season and you know this from the bachelor of how things go and how they edit you and how the fan base is feeling. And I thought it was obvious with Danny that he was going to definitely be in fifth because he had.
Whitney took him and paced him really nicely, but then he plateaued in those last couple of weeks. He went as far as he possibly could in terms of improvement and things like that. So I was like, He’s, he’s your fifth guy. He’s fifth place. Steven was someone whom had been in the bottom a couple of times, not enough to get him voted off because I felt like he and Riley were just a complete ball of sunshine.
People really love them. But also, even though I thought his freestyle was one of the highlights of the evening, I thought that coming into the finale, he was another one who had progressed as much as he was going to be able to, and that led them to fourth place. I always thought that we were going to get some 3rd between Ilona and Chandler and Joey, and just reading the room, reading the temperature and everything else when it came to Chandler, another 1, Who had done an amazing job in that freestyle.
I felt like the stage had already been set. People that have been complaining about her dance training all season. And this is something we have had so many good dancers in the past who have won the show. I don’t know why. And I also put a little bit of this on Carrie Anne for setting the stage for this early on.
And I feel like she set her up for a third place finish when I think potentially she could have been in first or second place, so I put Chandler there. Not that I wanted to put her there. Alona, her popularity. Huge, huge. I don’t think anyone was like touching her in terms of the popularity vote. And then in terms of Joey, of course he had Bachelor Nation behind him, but he also had a very consistent season, even if his freestyle wasn’t what everyone was expecting.
You know, I think we know that this is, Become more of a popularity contest. And with the advent of Tik TOK and Instagram reels plays a big role. It doesn’t really matter who the best dancer is. I mean, I even said it after the finals came out. Look, Chandler was the best dancer this season. Joey just happened to be the best dancer who didn’t start with any dance training.
He progressed the best and had a fan base and he had the likability factor, but he was not the best dancer on the show this season. But sometimes the best dancer. Does win charlie d’amelio was the best dancer easily might have been the best dancer in the history of this show But she’s clearly been dancing since she was a three year old or whatever like she’s a professional dancer sometimes it bothers people and sometimes it doesn’t that’s the weird thing about it is why does it get under people’s skin so much?
Bobby Bones certainly wasn’t the best dancer on the show and he won. So he was, and Joey, if you’re going to compare him to Joey, Joey is a better dancer than Bobby Bones, I think. So yeah, it’s like some seasons, it really bothers people that there’s a ringer on the show. Clearly with Chandler, it seemed to bother people way more than it did with Charlie and D’Amelio.
Like why didn’t Gabby beat, was Gabby on Charlie’s season? I think,
Now I’m thinking about Gabby finished 2nd
to Charlie. I can’t remember.
I feel like, yeah, that was 2 seasons ago. I was like, 31 was was Charlie’s when I know now I’m like, it all blurs into 1 and then last season. Yeah, Gabby was two seasons ago, I believe.
Yeah. So I think Gabby finished second to Charlie. So it’s like, why didn’t Gabby was likable? Why didn’t she win over Charlie? It’s just, I guess you just never know the fan base season to season, but you talk about Carrie Ann. She obviously took a lot of heat this season for, you know, I guess being so hard on Chandler and really nobody else.
I, I feel like. I don’t think she, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know. I can’t say like, Oh, she definitely had an inherent bias towards Chandler. Carrie Ann is always the hardest judge every season. She gets people for lifts and stuff like that. But did you notice something different to why? The noise was so much louder this season for Carrie Ann’s judging versus past seasons when I feel like she did the same exact thing to other contestants.
I think we have a couple things going on. One of them is the longstanding narrative of Carrie Ann being what I think is harder on some of the women. of the guys. And if you g look at this, we’ve seen on Hannah. She was really both of them who won. that that narrative comes she pushed them to the mi then you go and look at C Worth it, or did that feel right?
And so I think that that there’s a lot of the discourse there with Carrie Anne. I think Carrie Anne leaned into the controversy more than she ever did. And I think she had the backup of the producers on this. In fact, they did a article in variety with the producers and they were like, yeah, we, you know, we love people discussing the judges and whether they agree or disagree.
And then you also have the fact that we have such a new audience here that has joined. Dancing with the Stars. I mean, if you talked to me three or four seasons ago, I was like, this show is like one step away from cancellation. And all of a sudden Charlie D’Amelio came in and it moved to Disney Plus only for one season.
And that audience followed it back to ABC. It’s, it’s on Disney Plus too, but it’s on both of them concurrently now. You’ve got TikTok, you’ve got Gen Z, you’ve got Alpha Gen all chiming in about this show. And it’s brought it back. New eyeballs to the show. So I think that’s why we’re hearing more discourse about carry on as well.
Something that I saw on my tick tock for you page. I think it was maybe a day or two after the finale. And I thought this was really interesting was they were talking about social media engagement and they said, look, they went back and actually counted the videos. They said when Charlie D’Amelio was on the show.
From the time she started till the time she won on finale night, she posted, I think I could be getting the numbers wrong, but it was like 37 tick talks about behind the scenes stuff, practicing and all this stuff. They said a loaner this year did like 195 tick talks about being on the show, practicing, rehearsing behind the scenes stuff.
And that obviously seemed to play a major role in her coming in second. You know, Charlie only did 37. She won. Alona did 190, you know, six times more than Charlie and got second, probably played a major role. I don’t know what the number was for Chandler. But I’m guessing it was less than what Alona posted.
And I’m sure that helped Alona get second place. And that’s kind of where this is going. If you don’t promote yourself and you don’t talk about how great it is, you don’t show the funny moments behind the scenes, you’re probably going to fall behind in the social vote.
A hundred percent. And one thought, and I think I might’ve mentioned it when I did the podcast at with you in the early part of the season that I said Ilona was someone who has been on my radar since Tokyo 2021.
She really showed a lot of the behind the scenes because you know, they were all in quarantine while they were in Tokyo for that particular Olympics. And I’m like, who is this superstar? And why hasn’t dancing with the stars grabbed her already? Well, obviously we had to wait and for another Olympic cycle, but she already had a very big audience.
And when she started popping back up on my for you page for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, I was so excited. So excited because I knew she was giving us tons of content. She’s someone who’s bet was an early adopter into all the BCS behind the scenes type of coverage on Tik TOK that we love. And I knew she was going to deliver that for dancing with the stars.
So that was like easy. It makes it harder though, for future contestants. For maybe older generations that either don’t have a social media team or don’t do, you know, tick tock because they’re like, Oh, I get Instagram. No, you got to move over to tech talk for this. And I would say to future contestants and to the pros, get your social media content written into your contracts now, because it is a part of the job and you should be paid extra for it.
Yeah. I mean, it plays such a huge role. And. You know, when you talk about the finals with five teams, I can’t remember the last time anyone ever got an eight on a, in a final dance. So basically everyone’s getting nines and tens on that final dance, which means everyone’s gonna have either 60 or 59 or 58.
So no one’s ever really understood how the voting works in the percentage way. But when everybody’s basically getting the same scores in the finals. Basically, the reason the winner is going to be decided by social media and how many votes they get that way, because I can’t imagine someone getting a 58 and someone getting a 60, you know, two thirties and their final two dances versus someone who gets two 29s.
I can’t imagine that’s going to be the difference in sending you home by getting that 58. It’s got to come down to the social boat. And I guess that’s what is really determining this show now. And. You really, really have to play into your social media channels because it just doesn’t seem like anybody who doesn’t has a chance at this thing anymore.
A hundred percent. If you think about it, we had a record voting this season, and I do think it was a very slim margin between Joey and Ilona, to be honest. I think that Ilona probably gave him a run for that mirror ball in the end. And I was. Concerns because, you know, I thought like this has always been Joey’s mirror ball to lose.
I always thought he was so consistent throughout the season. We knew that he had the fans, bachelor nation with him. And when Carrie Ann said that freestyle was underwhelming, I was like, Oh, did that just lose the mirror ball? Because the judges very subtly can save certain phrases that will make people vote or not vote.
And I’m not talking about the people that are always voting for Joey. I’m talking about the average person. That’s like, Hmm, I’m going to wait till the freestyles and decide what one person I’m going to vote for to win. And I was like, this could possibly upset the whole scenario of who I thought, you know, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth, but you know what the votes in the end, it really came down to bachelor nation versus alone as fans.
And I don’t think that that margin was very big.
Yeah. What’s interesting is for the first time in forever, they talked about this record voting that they got. But if we’ve never known what the votes were in the past, how do we know that this was record voting? Is this just them coming up their show? Or, you know, they said we got record votes.
It’s like, great, but I don’t know what any of the numbers were in the previous 32 seasons because you never talk about it. You just say, Go vote,
right? We don’t know. There’s no transparency. It’s kind of like Netflix ratings. You’re like, I don’t know what happens. But I, I think for them to be able to promote it, it helps with their next season in terms of advertisers, thinking of all the eyeballs that are there and you know, I going to bet that their advertising rates for a, b, C next season skyrocket for the show and.
In this day and age in 2024 to see a ratings rise. I mean, the last seasons, like we saw a rise last year, but if you go to the prior seasons, when it was on ABC, it was struggling, you know, high threes, 3 million, 4 million, and that demographic was getting older and older. They’re loving that all of a sudden 18 to 24 is watching again.
They didn’t even look at the ratings. What were the ratings for the finale? How many eyeballs did it get?
5. 2 million, which is great.
Oh, yeah. Okay. In the same name.
That’s great. That’s fantastic. I mean, if we go back to the era of, you know, season 10, it was 20 million people, but those days are over because there’s so many different places that people are watching it.
And of course, yes, they’re watching on ABC, but they’re also watching on Disney plus and Hulu and, you know, next day on demand. So the metrics are a little bit different. I’m not sure that it eclipses 20 million either anymore, but the fact that people are talking about it and that it is water cooler talk.
ABC is thrilled.
Yeah. I mean, 5. 2 million or what it’s done versus, like you said, the most recent seasons is way better and that’s good for them, but really, I think a lot, what they care about is their social channels. The engagement that these dancers are getting on their own socials versus the dance with the star socials, the 30 to 60 minute clips people are putting up of their dances, even the dance with the stars, main Instagram page, main Tik TOK page that people are viewing that and getting engagement on that.
I mean, that’s kind of what they care about now. I mean, yes, they’ll look at the ratings to sell for the advertising dollars, but. If it’s just blowing up all over social and people’s for you page, like mine was during the season, every third video was something coming from Gleb and Brooks flirting on Tik TOK or something like that.
It was just like, okay, it’s, it’s part of my, for you page now. It knows what I stop and look at. And I think that’s what is such a big deal about the show. Whereas 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when it got 20 million viewers, there was no social media engagement. Cause it wasn’t a big thing back then for that.
So it’s like, it’s a trade off.
The other thing to think about, too, is that they have a tour coming up. The tour will be, you know, going out in January through March. I think it’s somewhere around 68 cities or so. So there’s money to be made there. There’s merchandise sales, of course. And it’s interesting to watch, like, in Los Angeles, the past two or three years, when they have gone on tour, minus the pandemic, they’ve been going up to Thousand Oaks and calling it the Los Angeles Stop.
And you know that that’s not true. Los Angeles proper by any means. They were able to sort of like move back to a bigger theater. Last year, this year, they’re at the Dolby theater, 3, 300 seats. This is where the Oscars happens. If people aren’t familiar with the Dolby theater and I went and looked yesterday just at the tickets and how it was selling, they are selling tickets all the way through the third balcony, which is nosebleed up there.
It’s hard to see, but I will tell you that at this point, if you’re looking for orchestra, there’s only a smattering of seats. Left, which is incredible. And it’s the only stop I believe that Alona is performing at.
Interesting. Yeah. I know that not all of them perform in every city. Some only do certain cities.
Joey’s not in every city, right? He’s only doing select few. If you go, if you look, you know, overall this season, do you have an issue with best dancer versus best story? Does it matter to you? Like if Chandler would have won, would you have been like Joey was robbed or Alona was robbed? Or if Alona would have won, would you have been like Joey and Chandler were robbed?
Do you have an issue with best story versus best answer?
I don’t, I do love a good journey. I’ll be honest about that. I felt, you know, you look at someone like Alona who really came in. Like, okay, like I’m a rugby player and everyone’s expecting me to be strong. And then I would look at some of her softer, more lyrical dances and she was gorgeous.
So I loved to see her journey with all of that. Joey was someone, I think his tennis really helped him, you know, there’s similar movements to dance and tennis and being quick on your feet on a court. That’s why it translated so well for him. And Jenna is a great choreographer and teacher. And then I look at someone like Chandler who comes in with the dance training.
But if you listen to Cheryl Burke in her podcast, she will often say, sometimes when you have the best dancer, they’re the most difficult ones to teach because what you’ve learned in ballet does not translate to ballroom. Oftentimes like in ballet, you’re on your, the balls of your feet. And sometimes I need you to do a heel lead.
And so, and vice versa. And it. There’s a lot of deep programming you need to do with a trained dancer. The one thing and the advantage that I think trained dancers have is remembering choreography. You can teach them very quickly. They will have it in their bodies quickly because they have the muscle memory.
That’s why athletes do well as and the show as well. And then, of course, the other thing is if you decide to change the dance at the last minute. Chances are they’re not going to get stressed out. They’ve had plenty of performance training over their careers. So those are some of the advantages, but does it get you that mirror ball trophy in the end we’ve seen time and time again, it does not get you the mirror ball trophy, Bobby bones season.
I think Corbin blue from high school musicals, another one who didn’t win his season and everyone just assumed it was going to happen.
Yeah, it’s. It’s definitely a different show, certainly than it, what it was. And I know Cheryl has been very outspoken about it. And, you know, people criticize her a lot for the stuff that she says, but I just think she’s being honest.
And I remember her telling me that at the beginning of the season, when I had her on in that first week, she said the same thing, like it is a lot tougher. To coach somebody who has training rather than somebody who comes in with no knowledge, because then you’re, they’re just listening to whatever you say, versus somebody who’s had training.
You know, they’re just like, well, wait a second. I was told how to do it this way. And I, I love Cheryl’s honesty when it comes to this show. I know a lot of people have really starting to take issue with some of the things you said. They think that she’s just a hater. She just said, but she’s just speaking her mind.
She’s acting on her podcast, like a judge. And if I were to judge this show. This is how I feel like what I saw. I can’t remember if it was the family or the semifinals where she said, I didn’t think anybody deserved a 10. I wasn’t impressed with any of them. And people got mad at her for that. And I was at finals or semifinals that she
said my finals.
She was saying that. Yeah. And you know, with the funny thing, and I said this a lot on Charles podcast, I’m like, two things can coexist. The dancing with the stars can bring you so much joy. We have so much noise going on in the world and you can sit for two hours and you can watch dance and it’s fun.
We’ve gotten all this behind the scenes content of what’s happened during the week with the rehearsals. But you also have to understand that like any job, there are politics that could happen. And there’s favoritism behind the scenes with producers and interactions with the cast and the crew and everything else.
And there are some times that. The pros should be treated better and you know, we’ve seen a lot of these situations play out over the year and I think it’s fair for Cheryl to talk about it or a former contestant that she interviews to talk about it as well because people should understand that the show is amazing, but also it’s very hard and it’s hard emotionally and I think sometimes we’re seeing that lack of support.
I think to me, the biggest interview that Cheryl’s done this year was with Cherry Lawson and. Talking about charity and the bullying she was experiencing, a lot of it, blatant racism that was on the Dancing with the Stars page, and they weren’t taking it off. They weren’t removing it. So she reads it and it’s hurtful.
And to me, the biggest story with charity was her relationship with Dotton, who was in the stands, you know, in the audience every single week, supporting her, the love he had for her. He didn’t feel like she overshadowed him or anything else. And I was like, why aren’t we showing this? Because this is amazing.
Every time I was in the ballroom.
Yeah. And I, you know, I, like I said, I don’t have an issue with anything that, that Cheryl has said. And I think, you know, the thing that she hit on, I thought was really important for, for listeners to understand is, I think she was talking about when you start the show, Especially in that first episode, usually no one gets more than an eight in that first episode.
And I think Chandler got eights across the board in that first episode because she was like the most experienced. But when you get eights in your first episode, I mean, yeah, you can get nines and tens later on, but it’s almost like I was at Cheryl that said it, or somebody else that said it might’ve been somebody else that said they literally should be giving people fives and sixes in the first episode, just so you can get and build towards nines and tens.
If you’re at eight in episode one, it’s like, If you, if you get eights in episode two, it’s like, well, did they improve? And it’s just like, well, we can’t give them nines in episode two. Cause that’s way too early. We got 10 more weeks to go. So it is a, it is a fine line of how do you even judge this?
anymore. And do the scores really even matter? I don’t know. It gets confusing after a while.
It is confusing because a Chandler eight is not the same as say an Eric Roberts eight for sure, because they’re judging Eric on, you know, he was someone who had very limited training and wasn’t the natural mover that obviously that Chandler was.
And so you look at that and you’re like, well, how can Chandler and Eric get an eight in the same week? And I’m just throwing this out. I don’t necessarily know that that happened, but you look at that and think. People, especially if you’ve just come to the table and started watching Dancing with the Stars and haven’t been there since 2005, they’re so confused and I really do think in sort of like that post mortem roundtable that the producers are going to have.
Let’s set up a structure of what the judging looks like. What do the judges like, what are their parameters and whether they each have a category and, you know, carry ends like, okay, I’m judging on performance and you know, Derek’s judging on technique and Bruno’s got something else you could do that. Or there could be three or four bullet points that they have to judge by, and they can explain that a little bit better and give the critical feedback.
So that when they are in the rehearsal studio next week going, Oh, that’s right. They all, you know, all the judges had the same comment about pointing my feet or something. And that’s what you work on. And that would be also very understandable to the people at home watching instead of an arbitrary eight.
I also think that what could possibly add to it in terms of the scoring is go to half points, seven and a half, eight, eight and a half, because if you’re eight, the only thing you can do next is nine, I think you can go to an eight and a half, like they would make it a bit now. Granted, people with math are going to be like, wait, what’s eight and a half plus seven plus eight and a half.
Again, I understand. Some people aren’t great at math. It wouldn’t be a problem for me, but, yeah. Why not go to half points on the paddles? I mean, cause what, the paddle isn’t big enough? I mean, you can make the paddle big enough to do a seven and a half, an eight and a half, and a nine and a half. I just think 7, 8, 9, 10.
It’s just, you don’t have a lot of room there and
it’s with a half.
You can do that.
Yeah. It’s really a great point that you make. And in fact, there are seven and a half and eight and a half paddles floating around somewhere in that studio because in season 15, which was the all star season, they did Institute half points.
Oh,
wow. I didn’t remem 7.
5 and 8. Maybe that’s s bring back and that would people to understand what I’m also curious as if th up the judges panel. Kind of going back to you because Mark Ballas came on and did a guest spot this season.
He was great.
He was amazing. And I feel like he is the Len Goodman that we are missing from that panel.
Because Derek’s kind of played a little bit more Switzerland and doesn’t want to be as critical as maybe Mark wants to be. And I don’t think, here’s my thought, I don’t think that they’ll go back to four judges. It’s too much. There’s not enough time. And I worry when you have two very long term hosts, I mean, judges like Carrie Ann and Bruno, who are probably very, very expensive in a time when budgets in Los Angeles are contracting.
If we see someone leave and then Mark comes in to replace them.
Yeah. That’s a, that’s an interesting thing because with the judges, do you just have a fourth judge every other week? And does Mark get more than one or do you literally just carry and sit out a couple of weeks and she’s still a judge, but she doesn’t get as many weeks.
She gets paid less. I, yeah, I don’t know what they’re going to do on that. And I’ve always said this about Derek. I think, you know, obviously one of the best pros, if not arguably the best pro dancer that this show has ever had. So he’s more than the most, so I guess you got to do it that way. But in terms of his judging, even when he does criticize, he always follows it up with an overflow of compliments to be like, look, you did this here and you didn’t have your chest down, your arms could have been, but I loved it and everything else is great.
And. Whereas Len was never like that. Len just told you, I didn’t like it and you did this wrong. And Derek will criticize, but every time he criticizes, he always follows it up with an overflow of compliments. And I get it. I think we just do need a stricter judge. Now of the three that they have right now, Carrie Ann is certainly the strictest and she’ll tell you what she feels.
And it was just, this season was just so weird to me because I was almost like, and it might’ve been what you said, a lot of new viewers, but I was just like, I’ve been watching the show since season one. This is the way Carrie Ann’s always been. She always tells it the way she sees it and she’s never held back.
And I think The criticism from the outside kind of got to her this season because every time she did criticize and then would get booed, she would always address it during her criticisms and be and just, she got very defensive. So I don’t know, I, it would be weird to not have a season. With Carrie Ann or Bruno, but I also feel like mark needs to be incorporated more.
So I don’t know what you do. I, I don’t know.
Yeah. A couple of things to your point in all of this. It’s you know, you don’t want anyone to ever lose their job. And because, you know, change is hard when we lost Tom Bergeron and Aaron Andrews, that was huge. And the audience, a lot of them rebelled against that.
I think that they’ll always keep carry in on the panel. They need a female voice in there and they’ve leaned into the controversy with carry on. In fact, after her most controversial week, they flew her to good morning America and she did a press tour. So they’re not mad at it. They’re not mad at her, her controversy.
But I do worry about Bruno because I always feel like Bruno and Derek are kind of the same judge. They’re kind of giving the same comments. And So he, I worry about Bruno a little bit more than I worry about Carrie Ann. Does Mark come in and slide into that spot if they don’t add a fourth judge? That’s something to, to really think about.
And I, I think about budgets and, you know, even people are saying, well, now that we have, you know, dancing with the stars on the rise and people are watching again, that budget’s going to get bigger and we’re going to get the spring season back. And I’m like, we’re not, if anyone’s following what’s happening in Los Angeles, whether it’s a reality show or a scripted show, things are getting smaller.
They’re trying to do as much as they can on smaller budgets right now. Those budgets are not increasing. So if they want to get rid of like really expensive people, really expensive pros, you will probably see some younger pros come in because guess what? They’re also more affordable and they bring new life.
Well, that
answers my question about Do you think they’re ever going back to two seasons in a calendar year? Apparently not. No spring and fall. I don’t
think so. I think that, and I think it’s actually smart of them having it once a year really makes it something
to look forward to.
Absolutely. And investing that time, energy and money into one season a year is And I think if you see what Riley and Ezra have done in terms of reinvigorating that Gen Z, that alpha gen to the show, they’re going to be looking for another, another young pro, whether male or female to bring onto the show for next season.
I think one by one, we’re going to start seeing at least one new pro.
