Casting, Patience, and Distribution Lessons from Season 35
The new season of Dancing with the Stars just posted its best premiere numbers in six years, and the 20-year-old competition show didn’t get there by accident. As someone who spent age two through my twenties in a dance studio and has watched the show since its first season, I don’t say this lightly, it’s one of the most impressive audience turnarounds on television right now. Behind that growth is a PR machine running at full speed, one that nonprofits and socially responsible companies can learn a lot from.
Season 35 kicked off on September 15 with 6.67 million viewers, a 24 percent jump over last season’s premiere and the show’s biggest opening night in six years. The 18 to 49 year old demographic, the one advertisers target most often, surged 40% to a 1.48 rating, the show’s best performance in that group in nearly a decade. Then the online voting system crashed mid-broadcast from the volume of traffic, forcing producers to toss every online ballot for the night and shift entirely to text voting, which host Alfonso Ribeiro said broke records on its own. A technical failure turned into a headline about audience demand.
This momentum has been building for a few seasons now, and producers point directly to one strategic shift as the reason: casting. Rather than playing it safe with celebrities its older, established audience would already recognize, DWTS started deliberately recruiting creators and influencers like Alix Earle, who finished as runner-up last season while pulling in her existing 7.5 million TikTok followers as new viewers. It’s not just about picking someone famous, it’s about knowing exactly who your audience is and picking a messenger they’ll respond to, then giving that audience a reason to give the show a try. For a nonprofit, that same thinking might mean handing the microphone to a younger board member or a program participant your usual donor base has never heard from, rather than defaulting to the same seasoned spokesperson every campaign.
The show also gives its stars something a press release never could: extended exposure to reframe a personal narrative or elevate a cause they care about. A few years ago, DWTS took Ariana Madix from a headline-making cheating scandal on Vanderpump Rules to a Broadway debut in Chicago in 2024 and is now starring in Just in Time, proof of how far that runway can carry someone. This season, fellow Bravolebrity Ciara Miller is attempting the same shift, using her weeks in the ballroom to move past a very public breakup storyline on Summer House in front of her 1.1 million Instagram followers. Paralympic gold medalist Ezra Frech, who has 261,000 followers of his own, is using the platform to carry the message he’s built his career on, that limits are negotiable. And Julia Stiles, still getting ribbed by Andy Cohen decades later for her dancing in Save the Last Dance and 10 Things I Hate About You, is proving the strategy works in real time. Hours after her first dance, Cohen posted a video apologizing to her. The lesson for any organization managing its own reputation is the same one: real change in how people see you rarely comes from a single statement, it comes from accumulating small, visible, authentic moments over time.
None of this works without content moving as fast as the show itself. For much of the audience, watching Dancing with the Stars now means watching the dozens of TikToks and Instagram Reels that contestants and pros post throughout the week, not just the Tuesday broadcast. Season 35 is reportedly the first to require contestants be active on social media during the competition, before it was just encouraged. Robert Irwin, last season’s winner, currently has 9.7 million TikTok followers and nearly 9 million on Instagram, and after week one alone his combined following grew by more than 343,000. Contestants and pros aren’t just performing, they’re distributing. A nonprofit doesn’t need a celebrity’s following to use the same principle. Staff, volunteers, and the people your programs serve posting about the work in real time will often reach people your official organization’s channels never will.
Most of our clients aren’t working with Robert Irwin’s numbers, however, these strategies scale down just as well as they scale up. The key is to know your audience, give your story room to build, and engage the people who already believe in your mission to tell it.
If you’re rethinking how your organization tells its story or want a strategy built around your target audiences, that’s the kind of work we love at Teak Media. Reach out, we’d love to talk it through.
Header image: Disney / ABC
