PureDWTS Season 28 Live Blog: GMA Announcing the First Two Contestants!!! **POSTPONED INDEFINITELY**

And we begin our broadcast day, friends 🙂 With this announcement (the earliest we’ve ever been given confirmation on a celeb cast member, mind you), I’d say the season 28 cycle has officially commenced!

I know there’s been some skepticism – “Why are they announcing this so early??? Ugh, I hope this isn’t like the announcement mess of season 21!!!” And I get it – that rolling announcement they attempted for season 21 was a dumpster fire. But given that we’re coming off the longest hiatus between seasons in the history of the show (and coming off an almost universally panned season, mind you), I think it’s important that the show get the ball rolling earlier than usual – they’re going to have to start the arduous process of getting fans excited about the show again, and invested in the upcoming season. The longer they lay dormant, the less likely viewers are to tune in – so I fully expect the month of August to be a tad bananas in the DWTS fandom, and I think we may see more cast announcements between now and early September, when they usually reveal the full cast.

As for this announcement – I tend to think (hope) they’ve managed to snag some popular, relevant celebs, and are using this early reveal to whet our appetites for what’s to come. The prevailing theory from the comments on this post is that it’s going to be recent Bachelorette Hannah Brown and her runner-up-cum-second-chance-flame Tyler Cameron, which I think would be a very shrewd choice – as much as we’ve eye-rolled at past Bachelors on DWTS, the most recent incarnation of the show was surprisingly progressive (Hannah shutting down slut-shamey comments from one of her suitors, Tyler C. being a woke, respectful king) as well as scandalous (Hannah’s final pick, Jed, was revealed to have been in a relationship with someone back home during the duration of the show, and apparently had only done the show to “further his singing career”).  Hannah and Tyler are having a moment – a big moment! – and they would likely be a huge ratings draw, as Bachelor franchise fans are invested in whether or not they’ll rekindle their romance. Whether you love The Bachelor franchise, hate The Bachelor franchise, or love to hate The Bachelor franchise, this would be a very good move for DWTS. Plus I think it’s high time that we get another Bachelorette on the show – Rycroft doesn’t count, so we haven’t had one since Trista in season 1 (Kaitlyn Bristowe DWTS drama notwithstanding). I’m also told that Tyler has always wanted to do DWTS, and is possibly-maybe a bit of a ringer…? 😉 Music to my ears, after watching Grocery Joe lumber awkwardly through season 27.

If not Hannah & Tyler, then who else could it be? Again, I go back to it being someone big and possibly a package deal – my only other guess was Gronk and his model/dancer gf Camille Kostek. What are your theories as we wait to find out? 🙂

UPDATE, 7:58 AM EST, 8/5/19: Apparently no mention has been made of DWTS so far on GMA – and the tone seems very somber today, in light of the two mass shootings over the weekend.  Makes me wonder if they’ll still do this announcement…stay tuned…

UPDATE, 8:18 AM EST, 8/5/19: Looks like the announcement got pushed, per this tweet from Ginger…lol. Guess we’ll try this again tomorrow…

Update, 3:01 PM EST, 8/5/19: Sooo…the DWTS announcement may or may not be tomorrow…check out Tom’s response to a fan asking about it.  Then again, I’m not sure that they were even planning on having Tom on GMA for this particular announcement, so it would make sense that he didn’t know anything. We’ll watch again tomorrow, just on the off-chance they do make the announcement…but it seems a bit up-in-the-air at the moment…

Update, 4:43 PM EST, 8/5/19: Kristyn reached out to ABC publicity to ask when the announcement was rescheduled, and was told it was “postponed indefinitely” 🙁 We’ll keep an eye out to see if/when it might come up again, but for now…no news, kids.