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Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Dancing with the Stars (U.S. TV series)

Dancing with the Stars is a reality show airing on ABC in the United States, and CTV in Canada. The show is the American version of the British BBC television series Strictly Come Dancing. Tom Bergeron is the host. His co-hosts have changed several times over the seasons. In the first season, the co-host was Lisa Canning. E! reporter Samantha Harris co-hosted from seasons two through nine. Model and Season 7 champion, Brooke Burke, took over as co-host in 2010.
The contestant pairs consist of a celebrity paired with a professional dancer. Past celebrity contestants include a race-car driver, Olympians, football players, supermodels, actors, singers, an astronaut, and teen-heartthrobs. Each couple performs predetermined dances and competes against the others for judges' points and audience votes. Whichever couple receives the lowest combined total of judges points and audience votes is eliminated until the champion dance pair remains.
A figure skating spin-off called Skating with the Stars aired on ABC on November 22, 2010 but was cancelled after one season.




Scoring and voting procedure


The scoring begins with the judges' marks. Each judge gives a 1 to 10 score, for a total score of 3 to 30 (the lowest individual score, however, was a 2 for Master P's Paso Doble in season 2, and the lowest total score for a dance was an 8). When multiple performances are scored, only the cumulative total counts. The contestants' "judges' shares" are calculated as the percentage of the total number of points awarded to all contestants that evening. (For example, if a team earned 20 points on a night when the judges awarded 200 points, their judges' share would be 20/200 = 10%.) This percentage is then added to the percentage of North American votes received by each contestant. The bottom two couples are identified in the results show, and the couple with the lowest combined total is eliminated. Season 8 added an occasional "dance-off," in which contestants could re-do one of their dances, in an effort to improve their judges' score. This might be discontinued due to the eliminated couple always scoring higher than or equivalent to the couple that was saved.
Public voting is conducted via a toll-free number, the ABC web site, and, most recently, text messages; contestants can vote during and immediately after each performance show. The maximum number of votes per voter per medium is equal to the number of couples performing that night, or five votes, whichever is larger. In April 2010 it was revealed that dancer Kate Gosselin had e-mailed friends and family asking them to vote as many as ten times each.[3] In November 2010, the Washington Post reported that online voting appeared not to require a valid email address, and accordingly that a large number of votes apparently could be cast by one person.
In several cases where ESPN coverage of Monday Night Football airs instead on an ABC affiliate in an NFL team's home market, the program is delayed to air immediately after that station's local news, and a voting window confined only to the area codes of the pre-empted market is opened up to allow affected viewers to still put their votes in for the competition, though this is on a market-by-market basis.




General information


Payment


On the April 18, 2006 episode of the Howard Stern Radio Show, Stern's wife Beth said that she was guaranteed to earn $125,000 for just appearing on DWTS (in Season 3) and could earn up to more than double the original sum, depending on how long she lasted on the program.


Withdrawals
Romeo was the first person to withdraw in the second season. His father, Master P, took his place in the competition, being partnered with Ashly DelGrosso. However, Romeo later competed in season 12 and finished in 5th place.
On the sixth week of competition during the third season, Sara Evans cited her divorce as the reason for leaving the competition. No one was eliminated that week.
Another withdrawal occurred during the run-up to Season 4 on February 28, when Vincent Pastore withdrew from the competition after only one week of training. Pastore said he did not realize how much work was needed during a ten-week period, and that he was not up to the physical demands of the show. He was replaced on March 2 by actor John Ratzenberger who was partnered with Edyta Sliwinska.
In season 7, Misty May-Treanor withdrew from the competition in week 3 after rupturing her Achilles tendon when rehearsing her Jive with her partner, Maksim Chmerkovskiy. She did not perform the routine at all nor was she scored for it; no one else was eliminated that week.
In Season 8, Jewel and Nancy O'Dell were injured before the season even began and could not compete. Jewel was diagnosed with fractured tibias in both legs; she came back later in the season to perform "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" on a results show. O'Dell suffered from a torn knee cartilage. They were replaced by Holly Madison and Melissa Rycroft who would be dancing with their partners for the rest of the season (Dmitry Chaplin and Tony Dovolani).
Tom DeLay, in Season 9, withdrew in the third week of competition due to a full stress fracture that had developed in both feet from an earlier pre-stress fracture in one foot. Delay was declared safe before he announced his withdrawal during the October 6, 2009 results show. Debi Mazar was still eliminated that night despite DeLay's departure.




Celebrity and professional partner injuries
Celebrities and professional partners have experienced minor injuries, or in some cases more serious, which did not affect later performances.
In Season 5, Marie Osmond infamously fainted after her performance in week five of the competition, after which the program immediately went into commercial; however, Osmond was able to regain composure and continued with the program. Episodes of food poisoning or the flu have caused stars like Jane Seymour to miss portions of other programs. Mark Ballas dislocated his shoulder when he came back in the finale to dance again with his eliminated partner, Sabrina Bryan.
In Season 6, Cristián de la Fuente suffered a ruptured tendon in his left biceps muscle during his performance on week 7. The judges critiqued him according to his performance up to the injury. He was sent to the hospital immediately and missed the end of the show. Derek Hough injured his neck in a rehearsal with Shannon Elizabeth but still performed.
In season 7, Julianne Hough was rushed to the hospital after the results show on Week 6 with increasingly severe stomach pains. She was released the same night after it was determined that it was "just a bad stomach ache". However, she was ordered to sit out the group hip-hop dance rehearsals the next day as a precaution. On the October 27 performance show, Hough announced that she had been diagnosed with Endometriosis and would be having surgery on October 28 to have her appendix removed.[ Cody Linley, her partner, stayed to dance with Hough's temporary replacement, Edyta Sliwinska, who had been eliminated first. She returned in the semi-finals to dance with Linley and was eliminated with him that week.
In season 8, after landing on a wireless microphone pack and injuring his back during a dress rehearsal, Steve-O and his partner, Lacey Schwimmer, were unable to perform live. The judges critiqued their pre-recorded dress rehearsal performance. Melissa Rycroft suffered a rib cage injury also during a rehearsal and was judged based upon her pre-recorded dress rehearsal. Prior to her Group Mambo, professional Lacey Schwimmer filled in for her dancing with Tony Dovolani.
In season 9, both Lacey Schwimmer and Derek Hough had the flu and could not perform with their partners (Mark Dacascos and Joanna Krupa) who ended up dancing with substitute pros (Anna Trebunskaya and Maksim Chmerkovskiy).



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