Monday, January 18, 2010

If Dancing With the Stars Can Do It Why Can't Figure Skating

Dancing With the Stars is one of my favorite television shows. When it’s on, I get practically religious about it. The only other thing that compares in my devotion is figure skating, so being at Nationals, where I can immerse myself in the sport, is a great experience for me.

The difference, though, is that DWTS has consistently high ratings. For most of the show’s nine seasons, the only show that has been able to beat it in the ratings has been American Idol. This changed this past season, when according to USA Today, ratings decreased 17% from the previous season. (I again experienced a disconnect with the rest of the world, since I couldn’t get enough of the show last season because of Donny Osmond, who I’ve been in love with since I was eight years old.)

For me, watching figure skating naturally makes me think of DWTS. I’ve always thought that figure skaters would be a natural fit for the show, and Kristy Yamaguchi, who won in season 6 proved me right. There are all kinds of similarities between figure skating and ballroom dancing; an entire discipline of figure skating, ice dance, is based upon ballroom dancing. It makes sense to me, then, that if ballroom dancing can capture the imagination of the American public, so can figure skating.

I have a feeling that it all goes back to what I was saying in yesterday’s blog post. DWTS has had the support and promotion of an entire network. I understand that figure skating has some competition that, like football playoffs, which occur at the same time as Nationals. It occurs to me, though, that if figure skating was promoted more like DWTS is, it’d be much more popular. Actually, the thought occurred to me yesterday when the guy that U.S. Figure Skating has hired to entertain the crowd in between came over to my section. He was very funny, even when the camera wasn’t capturing him. I think that if that kind of thing was presented, more people would watch.

The disconnect that I’ve been talking about will probably continue, though, as the week goes on, even this weekend, when the “biggies” are back—the women and the dance teams.

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