The Washington Post has a nice feature up today with Tom Bergeron. Did he know Dancing With The Stars would become a phenomenon? Read on to see and thanks to DWTSGossip for the find.
“Dancing With the Stars” premiered in June 2005 as a quick, six-week series — who knew it would become a phenomenon? Certainly not host Tom Bergeron.
“I thought it would be fun, but I didn’t think it would be anything more than a summer show,” Bergeron said during an interview in Washington earlier this summer. “So I’ve been happy to be wrong about this one.”
More than a decade later, Season 23 of the ABC competition series debuts Monday night. Although it airs only once a week now, instead of twice, and although about 13 million people watched per week last season, instead of its heyday of 20 million in 2011, the show is an undeniable pop culture force. So it’s surprising to Bergeron that even though celebrities must know the deal by now (the show is a great-but-physically-grueling career move), some participants are still naive about the process.
“It’s interesting to me, given all the years we’ve been on, how many of them are still stunned a few weeks in about how much is required to be really competitive in terms of learning the dance steps,” said Bergeron, who co-hosts with sportscaster Erin Andrews. “And the deeper you are into the run, the more likely that you have to learn multiple dances for the competition as it gets into the quarters, semis and finals. But a lot of them are like, [high pitched voice] ‘Whaaaaat?’”
More at The Washington Post.