Dancing With The Stars is about to debut its 34th season on ABC and apparently the show is pulling in bigger audiences than ever—and battling rumors that it's rigged.
Executive producer Ryan O’Dowd just sat down for an interview with Deadline, who wasted no time asking about the "small contingent of fans who accuse the show of being fixed."
"We take that very seriously," Ryan said. "We have never, nor would we ever do anything to manipulate the votes. The show really needs to be credible. It needs to allow the viewers to have a voice and to really be the voice of who deserves to win. So we have never nor would we ever want to manipulate that in any way."
Ryan was also asked about the possibility of doing a live show for the West Coast and East Coast, and shut that down pretty fast.
"Many years ago, I worked on a singing show called Rising Star for ABC, and it became unbelievably challenging to produce," he said. "We would essentially have the live show for the east coast and central viewers and then we would stay and produce another live result. There was a West coast save element to that format and the juice wasn’t worth squeeze, to be honest. I think we are always looking for ways in which we can include the west coast in a more meaningful way. It’s just proven to be very difficult."
