'Dancing With the Stars' recaptured the zeitgeist. Emmy voters noticed

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Set us as preferred Executive producer and casting director Deena Katz has brought her daughter to the set of “Dancing With the Stars” since she was 4 years old.Now 25, Katz says, her daughter is watching the 21-year-old ABC network mainstay “as if it’s new all over again.” The youngster may have tuned in for podcast host and influencer Alix Earle and eventual champion Robert Irwin this season, but she was soon won over by older contestants such as Andy Richter and Elaine Hendrix.

As Katz says, “I feel like we do our job best when you might tune in for Alix, but you end up falling in love with someone you might not know, or you weren’t so aware of.”But it’s not sheer luck, much less magic, that brought “Dancing With the Stars” its first Emmy nomination for reality competition program in a decade, or its ratings resurgence and cultural relevance to a younger generation.It’s strategy.

And TikTok.“Our social media is now so big during the week,” Katz says.“People have to watch our show to keep up with the social media.

We used to be the show that everybody talked about the next day.And so we’re in the zeitgeist again.”Executive producer Conrad Green says the team behind the show always wanted to engage with a younger audience, but also recognized you can’t always force it without turning off your base.

The process began with tweaks to the casting of the dancers, evident in social media star Charli D’Amelio’s 2022 run, followed by Harry Jowsey in 2023 and Earle and Irwin this past season.But the show’s professional partners Rylee Arnold and Ezra Sosa have been just as important, using their own online brands to promote the show — creating hype that has since spurred the other dancers to get more involved.

From there it started to “take on a life of its own,” Green says.It also ha...