ABC has announced the full cast for the eleventh season of Dancing With the People Who Desperately Want to be Stars, and it’s full of the usual tabloid staples and stars of yesteryear. The complete roster is as follows:

• Michael Bolton
• Brandy
• Margaret Cho
• Jennifer Grey
• Rick Fox
• David Hasselhoff
• Florence Henderson
• Kyle Massey
• Bristol Palin
• Audrina Patridge
• Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino
• Kurt Warner

Camera-shy Palin and camera-hungry Sorrentino are the big news here. The rest are standard Dancing fare: you’ve got the athletes (Fox and Warner), the young (Massey and Patridge) and the not-so-young (Henderson), the comedian (Cho), and the oddball (Hasselhoff). Personally, I’m thinking that Brandy and Dirty Dancing star Jennifer Grey have an unfair advantage, with prior dancing experience. But hey, that’s never stopped the casting directors before.

The new season starts September 20th.

For the seventh time in the last eight years, CBS has emerged as the overall ratings winner for network television.

Nielsen’s annual ratings report indicates that CBS was boosted to the top of the heap thanks to the record-breaking broadcast of the Super Bowl showdown between the Colts and the Saints. This year’s Super Bowl was the most-watched television broadcast in history, bringing in more than 106 million viewers for the network. CBS also scored the highest-rated scripted program of the year, in NCIS. CBS also boasts the three most popular new programs of the year: NCIS: Los Angeles, The Good Wife, and Undercover Boss.

In second place is Fox, who averaged about two million fewer viewers each night than CBS. But Fox scored a major victory of its own: a 3.6 rating in the key 18-49 demographic, which placed Fox on top in this all-important age range that advertisers seek the most. American Idol remains Fox’s juggernaut, earning the “number one show on television” status for the seventh year in a row.

ABC came in third place for the season, boosted heavily by Dancing With the Stars. NBC landed fourth in the broadcast network ratings, though if not for the Winter Olympics, its overall ratings for the season would have been down from last year.

The CW, unsurprisingly, came in fifth place.

After the great performances in “Dancing with the Stars” last night elimination night will surely be interesting. The scores are pretty close with Niecy Nash trailing behind Pamela and Erin only by two points.

• Niecy Nash and Louis Van Amstel- 49
• Pamela Anderson and Damian Whitewood- 51
• Erin Andrews and Maksim Abcrunchowsky – 51
• Chad Ochochinco and Cheryl Burke – 52
• Evan Lysacek and Anna T- 54
• Nicole Scherzinger and Derek Hough – 54

With such close scores who knows who’ll be going home? The fan votes will definitely carry even more weight tonight and no pair will be safe, not even power couples Nicole and Derek and Evan and Anna. I do hope though that Evan and Anna will not be going home tonight. That will just be plain wrong after they got perfect 10 from all three judges for their Argentine tango!

However the eliminations will go though we can be sure that performances from this week forward will get even better with the stars shaping up to be like pros more each day. As for me I’m betting that Evan and Anna will go home with the trophy this season. You just do go toe on toe with a figure skating champ and not expect him to win a dance competition. But I might be wrong, people after all root tend to root for the “underdogs” (case in point: Kate Gosselin). As for the other pairs all I can be sure about is that at least for Erin and Maksim they’ll be bringing home something if not the trophy (Just watch TMZ!) while the rest will still have memories and fat paychecks.

Kate Gosselin may be have finally been booted off Dancing With the Stars last Tuesday but it sure isn’t the last time we’ll be seeing her on TV. Not including all the tabloids and Jon-Kate “entertainment updates”, Kate will be getting a lot of TV face time with her upcoming TLC show “Twist of Kate”. It is also reported that she’ll also be continuing the show “Jon an Kate Plus 8″ with the kids, of course this time sans Jon.

DWTS

Kate’s stint with DWTS sure was painful to watch but it just shows how bankable it is to do a reality show with her since she managed to stay on for weeks just by the sheer volume of votes from her fans. It just goes to show how much people can relate to the confusion and hardships that goes with motherhood, having a egotistic ex-husband, and maybe even finding yourself mess up but still wanting to go on for your kids and yourself. Even I was touched by Kate’s thank you. Anyway, I guess I can now watch DWTS without having to cringe so much. For DWTS though it might mean a significant drop in viewers with Kate gone.

Twist of Kate

In Twist of Kate, TLC will bring Kate to different states to meet different families with different issues. We can expect the show to take off what with the drama that Kate always brings wherever she goes, plus this time it might actually be educational for her to see just how hard it is for other more normal families to struggle through life without a reality show to pay for the bills. I hope Kate the best in this series and hope it will make enough for her that she’ll opt not to go ahead with Kate plus 8. I’m all for her working and appearing on TV but maybe it is time for the kids to get less exposure. But who am I to say, maybe they really do miss the TLC’s crew since they know no other life?

Chuck “Iceman” Liddell was finally chucked out of “Dancing with the Stars” along with professional dance partner Anna Trebunskaya.

Mixed martial artist Chuck Liddell appeared to be comfortable dancing the two-step in his jeans and leather vest. In fact Liddell’s performance this week was by far his best but though he (as usual) got praise from the judges for his hard work and ability to even dance at all, the low scores they gave combined with low viewer votes meant that he had to go home.

As judge Len Goodman said, “There’s a novelty value about you because you don’t expect you to be able to dance and so that’s good. But eventually you’ve got to come down to the fact that this is a dance competition and your quality of dancing isn’t there.”

Despite being booted off the show, Liddell’s partner remains proud of him saying that Liddell made her proud each week and that she loved working with her “bear and hippo”.

Other highlights of the last DWTS episode includes Mya and Melissa Joan Hart’s great scores, which I think they really deserved. Of course any Shakira performance is a treat so her appearance (she performed “ Hips Don’t Lie” and “Did it Again” )is another highlight for me.

Next week we’ll be seeing the last 10 pairs dance the Argentine tango and the paso doble. They will also be performing the hustle as a group.

Right after Paula Abdul sent out the tweet announcing that she won’t be back on American Idol next season the whole world was in an uproar. So much so that according to Kevin Reilly, Fox Entertainment’s President, Lance Armstrong was tweeting about the whole thing during the Tour de France. Apparently though while the whole world was stunned as they contemplated Idol without Paula, Reilly and the rest of Fox was not that rattled even coming out just 36 hours after with a guest judge (Victoria Beckham…so cool!) for the upcoming Idol auditions making Paula look like she’s really getting the short end of the stick in the deal (or no deal).

Anyway Paula is back with a vengeance (or might be back with a vengeance) with TV execs, the most prominent of which is ABC Entertainment’s President Stephen McPherson, courting her. According to McPherson, “We’d love to have her on ‘Dancing,’ whether as a contestant or participant of some sort, judge. I think she’s a huge talent. There’s a lot made about who she is. I think there is a sensitivity and emotion there that balances out ‘Idol.’ We’d love to get a piece of that.” With their romantic history it isn’t surprising that McPherson knows just how huge a talent Paula really has. But history notwithstanding the point is that Paula is surely going to be worth a lot now that she’s in the market and the demand is much more than the supply.

As for her future endeavors since we found out the Idol news through the the tweet that sealed the deal (quoted at the end of this post) I’m sure we’ll just have to keep on following Paula on Twitter to see what other announcements she might make.

“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to #IDOL. I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent,but most of all being a part of a show that I helped from day1become an international phenomenon.”

Dancing with the Stars has gone the “America’s Best Dance Crew” way when it comes to eliminating the bottom two teams: via dance-off. The major difference though is that instead of seeing two excellent routines that make it very hard for the judges to decide who to cut we have to watch two abysmal numbers again.

This week it was Belinda Carlisle (with Jonathan Roberts) and Steve Wozniak (with Karina Smirnoff) who had the great misfortune of having to show of their dancing skills, or lack of it, again. Belinda Carlisle had to go-go home when she got an even lower score for her salsa. Woz fared better than Belinda, though not more than he did the first time around, and kept his old score.

I can see the sense behind the new elimination format since the bottom two dancers at least get a chance to redeem themselves. However, it doesn’t make much sense when they don’t. Maybe they should wait till half of the dancers are eliminated and the week’s bottom two contestants are capable of actually challenging each other with a great dance-off. I’m pretty sure that with people responding to the first (possibly last?) dance-off the show’s producers will be taking notice. If the next dance-off doesn’t improve they’ll have to think of something really fast to make that segment seem more entertaining than a waste of time. Until then we can only cross our fingers and hope for a better dance-off next week.

Helio Castroneves isn’t going to let a tax evasion charge slow him down. The Dancing with the Stars star just completed a race. Unfortunately, will he be able to run fast enough to escape the IRS?

Meet the new cast of Dancing with the Stars! You’ll find singers Toni Braxton and Lance Bass, and reality TV personality Kim Kardashian, as well as a handful of athletes and even a celebrity chef.

Casting for Dancing With The Stars’ new season is currently underway and most of the speculation is revolving around erstwhile N’Sync outer Lance Bass. The talk is whether he will be paired with another man if ever he is included in the cast.

Opinions are mixed about the possibility of man-on-man action on TV. DWTS’ Cheryl Burke thinks it may not happen. She says America may not yet be ready to see two men dancing. But DWTS first season winner Kelly Monaco says she’s all for the idea.

Personally, I’d love to see DWTS really push the envelope with Bass in case he does agree. It’s just dancing, for chrissakes!