Writing up Seasons 6 and 7 – news for SYTYCD Season 8!

Check out this great piece from the The Daily Best/Sexy Beast (thanks Jordan, for sending us a link!) that discusses how the changes during the past two seasons have changed the show.

Here’s some highlights:

The season concludes this week, and looking back, it hasn’t gone well. Fox is aware that fans aren’t as thrilled as they once were. Last week, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly told me that changes, like replacing one of the judges, “stir the passions of a very passionate audience.” Some of that audience has fled: While ratings are up from last fall, they have fallen compared to last summer. The penultimate results show last Thursday lost another 10 percent of its viewers for a season low.

And later:

Making matters worse, last fall, the generally insufferable Adam Shankman joined the judging panel full-time, resulting in the end of one of the show’s better features, a rotating third guest judge who would bring completely different insight than, say, Murphy’s enthusiasm or Lythgoe’s occasional homophobia. Now, the judges, while passionate as always, seem to have more time than ever to ramble. More significantly, they have started using their power arbitrarily, opting to send no one home one week, which seemed like a ploy to save their favorite Billy Bell, who wasn’t viewers’ favorite. After the judges announced that sudden rule change, host Cat Deeley wittily and pointedly observed, “We just make this show up as we go along.”

And here’s the best part, for me, because I think Nigel’s been reading PureSYTYCD and likes my ideas. lol

Lythgoe wasn’t made available for an interview for this story, but he admitted to the media after Thursday’s results show that there were too many changes. Lythgoe called the response “frustrating” and said “I want to get it right for the audience, but at the same time, I don’t want to let down dance, and this season the dance situation has really been tremendous.” He plans to revert back to the previous Top 20 format but still bring in all-stars once it’s down to 10.

Well, if he liked that idea, I think he really should put together a Fall SYTYCD reality show like I keep saying. Yes, I’ll probably be insufferable if it happens (all the “I told you so!”s), but it will be really fun.

Enjoy the reading!