An unexpectedly huge shake-up is happening at ABC’s Dancing With The Stars, and not the kind of shake-up where a celebrity gets pretty good scores from the judges but fails to get any votes from the viewers and gets sent home, because that happens all the time. We’re talking legitimately unexpected (and not, for the record, the kind of “unexpected” where the judges decide not to send anyone home, because that also happens all the time). This is the kind of unexpected that people really don’t expect, and it will truly be a big change for the show.
That’s because, as reported by Deadline, hosts Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews are leaving Dancing With The Stars. Bergeron announced his exit on Twitter, while Andrews’ departure was relegated to a follow-up statement given to ET, and Bergeron kind of makes it sound like this wasn’t entirely his idea. In his tweet, he dances around (ha) saying why he’s leaving, simply saying that Dancing With The Stars will be “continuing” without him. The only official word comes from the statement given to ET, which mentions a “new creative direction” for the show.
Whether or not it’s related, this comes about a year after Bergeron publicly feuded with the show’s producers over their decision to let Sean Spicer compete. Bergeron said last August that he had made it clear that he wanted the show to be a “joyful respite from our exhausting political climate and free of inevitably divisive bookings from any party affiliation,” but the show did not do that. Clearly there was a difference of opinions about what the show should be, but nobody has said (and surely nobody would say one way or the other) if that’s related to Bergeron’s exit. Still, if Dancing With The Stars has no problem with divisive bookings, maybe next season should just have the coronavirus as a contestant?