Harry Shum Jr. and Jenna Johnson during the Dancing with the Stars season premiere.
Photo by Eric McCandless/Disney
It feels like a lot more than nine days since the Emmy Awards happened, but in putting together the ratings charts for last week I was reminded that yeah, in fact, they really were that recent. Thanks to about half a million people watching the show on Peacock, the Emmys managed to be the No. 1 non-football telecast of the week in primetime.
But let’s talk about a show that came in right behind the Emmys: Dancing with the Stars. Its 35th season premiered on Sept. 15 and 16, and it drew a big audience — bigger than any season premiere since 2020.
The season-opening show drew 6.77 million viewers, up 26 percent from last year’s premiere. The next night came in at 6.44 million viewers, holding 95 percent of the premiere audience. The two episodes also drew ratings of 1.63 and 1.47 (equal to 2.07 million and 1.86 million viewers) among adults 18-49, also way up from a year ago and the best premiere for the show since 2017.
All that is confounding. Shows that have been around that long just about never post growth like that, but DWTS is only continuing a run that started last season. It’s one of the more remarkable ratings stories on network TV in the past few years.
As last year’s competition was closing, my Hollywood Reporter colleague McKinley Franklin (who covers the show in depth week to week) did a really interesting story on how DWTS regained its juice. A combination of very smart casting, headed by Deena Katz — including leaning into influencers and reality TV folks with big online followings — and savvy use social media by the show itself, as well as contestants and pro dancers, all helped contribute to the ratings bounce.
Not explicitly mentioned in that story, but something I can’t help but think was a factor, is related to the social media part of it: More than most TV shows, DWTS works very well when edited for social. The dances are easily clippable, and while they present on the show’s official pages as horizontal video, I suspect they would translate well to vertical video too.
I posted a story at THR today about how the old-school network model is enjoying a minor renaissance — series orders are up a little, and even outside of broadcasters, people seem to be realizing that making and releasing shows on a consistent schedule (and with more than eight or 10 episodes) can be a good way to work. That piece focused on the scripted side of the ledger, but what Dancing with the Stars is doing is not a small part of the optimism.
The top network and cable shows for last week are below, followed by the syndicated top 10 for the first week of September.