News

Are you a fan of the American TV reality show Dancing with the Stars? If so, you have almost certainly wondered who thought it up and how it came to be. The fact is that it is not truly an American programme at all. Dancing with the Stars is a spin off of the British TV show Strictly Come Dancing.

Strictly Come Dancing is a BBC programme which the commercial arm of the BBC, BBC Worldwide, decided to sell franchises for. Australia was the first country to take up a franchise, but now, seven or eight years on, Strictly Come Dancing is being produced in 38 countries including Vietnam and Albania.

These countries, like America, make their own version of Strictly Come Dancing with their own local celebrities and to some extent, their own local dancing forms of ballroom dancing. They also give the local versions localised names in their own languages, most of which are translations of the words Dancing with the Stars.

Some of these countries then sell them on to other countries. Britain, for example, is showing America’s Dancing with the Stars on Sky television placing it in competition with the BBC’s version.

However, the American style of the programme has not gone down so well in the UK, which means that BBC Worldwide was correct to sell the franchise and not merely Strictly Come Dancing, because each country has customized the format of the show to suit the local population.

The American format has been massively popular in the United States and March 2012 marks the start of its 14th series. The format of the show is really quite straightforward: celebrities with flagging careers are teamed up with professional dancers and choreographers who teach them a tough dance routine. Six couple compete in a knock-out competition until a winner is left.

The female dancers wear skimpy revealing gowns and the men wear smart suits. The dancing is ballroom style, the music is orchestral and the sets are sensational. The programmes radiate an olde worlde style of refinement, sophistication and innocence.

The professional dancer has his or her work cut out for them because the celeb is not a professional dancer, is frequently getting on a little and might also be out of condition. It is often said that it is the quality of the celebrities’ dancing that wins or loses for the pair.

Voting is done by the panel of three judges and by the TV viewers. The couple with the lowest number of votes is eliminated. Dancing with the Stars has close ties to the British version in that two of the judges, Len Goodman and Bruno Tonioli are also judges on Strictly Come Dancing and have been since the start.

One difficulty that a show like Dancing with the Stars has is its local nature. People want to see stars that they have heard of. Therefore, Britain employs old British stars and America, Albania, Brazil et al. use their own local stars. This means that the series do not always sell well across international boundaries.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on quite a lot of subjects, but is currently concerned with the Dancing with the the Stars message board. If you want to know more go to our web site at DWTS Pictures.

Numerous celebrities have stated that they did not go on Dancing with the Stars for the money, but that they did it for the fun of it. This might be a fact, but it is typical celebrity speak. At least one ‘star’ went on record and said that she was promised $125,000 just to tun up and more if she progressed through the show. This is not chicken feed to normal people.

However, taking into account the abnormal salaries that celebrities pick up, it might not be a lot of money to them. After all, film stars frequently are paid millions of dollars a film plus royalties. So why are they lining up to go on Dancing with the Stars? Well, close inspection of the ‘celebrity cast’ frequently reveals that the stars are a bit dim. Not stupid, just a bit off their peak.

So perhaps they are hoping to earn a bit of pocket money and kick start their career at the same time. If we look at the contestants from the first series, we can see that an appearance on the programme did not help anyone’s career: Trista Rehn, Evander Holyfield, Rachel Hunter, Joey McIntyre, John O”Hurley and Kelly Monaco are still doing approximately the same now as they were before their appearance on the show .

The second series was a mixed bag. Tatum O’Neal got arrested for drugs and Master P is still producing albums, but Lisa Rinna landed a new career as a television host on the Soap Opera network. From the third series Mario Lopez went on to star in ‘A Chorus Line’ on Broadway and Monique Coleman has had a number of lucrative contracts with Disney, although she was working for them earlier.

Dancing with the Stars did not seem to have much beneficial effect on the careers of any of its contestants which included Billy Ray Cyrus, Laila Ali and Heather Mills. The results on participants from the fifth series was also rather lacklustre although Melanie Brown and the Spice Girls launched a reunion world tour and Floyd Mayweather made a special appearance on WWE for a fat pay cheque.

The sixth series had such oldies as Steve Guttenberg and Priscilla Presley as well as Penn Jillette and Shannon Elizabeth, none of whom saw a significant increase in popularity after the end of the series. If it goes on like this, old celebrities with waning careers will ask for more than promises and pin money to compete on Dancing with the Stars in the future.

Still, some individuals just cannot resist the limelight and for them it is worth getting only $125,000 to get under the spotlight and on television again and if their career is kick started as well, well, that is a welcome, added bonus that none of them would turn down.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a number of topics, but is currently concerned with the host of Dancing with the the Stars. If you want to know more go to our web site at DWTS Pictures.