It must be daunting sitting down to cast the 16th series of a celebrity ballroom dancing contest. The producer leans back in their meeting room chair, idly tossing a rubber band ball in the air: “Guys, Deborah Meaden?” ”We already had her in series 11.” ”Nancy Dell’Olio?” ”9.”
The little black book of minor celebrity’s phone numbers is so well-thumbed by now that it’s in tatters, and it showed in the first contestants announced for series 16 of Strictly Come Dancing: Faye Tozer from Steps, Katie Piper from general daytime TV and Danny John-Jules from... Red Dwarf I think?
This morning saw a surprising departure from the garden variety D-lister, however, as YouTube star Joe Sugg signed up.
The celebrity of Sugg, aka Thatcher Joe, is not in question, the 26-year-old having amassed 8.2m subscribers to his channel thanks to the popularity of classic pieces of video content like REACTING TO YOUR CONFESSIONS #6, GIRLFRIEND REVENGE PRANK and, who could forget, EGGSTREME KINDER EGG ROULETTE.
With 8.1m views, COUPLES YOGA FAIL (sic) for instance actually rivals the ratings for an episode of Strictly, despite it having had little to no budget for sequins and live orchestras.
On the surface of it, it’s a no-brainer then – only the move relies on a non-existent Venn diagram overlap of the ‘YouTube fan’ and ‘ballroom dancing fan’ circles. Last time I checked there wasn’t a huge amount of ‘HILARIOUS CHA-CHA-CHA FAIL’ videos on YouTube, nor could I find a trace of REACTING TO MY MATE’S FOXTROT or VIENNESE WALTZING IN A FROZEN ONESIE ON OMEGLE#8.
Similarly, while ballroom dancing might not do it for Suggs’s fans, the YouTuber will be a completely alien to your average Strictly viewer, who still thinks the buffering wheel on a YouTube video is some kind of virus.
Although the move to YouTubers might smack of desperation at the BBC, and a general sense of reality TV fatigue may have long since set in with most of us, Strictly posted its highest ratings ever in 2016 with the Ed Balls-featuring series and seems inexorable. While many will cheer the day it is decommissioned, this opening up of the viewership to millennials could secure its future for years to come.
