Bobby Bones is one of the most memorable winners of Dancing With the Stars, and he still has plenty to say about the show nearly eight years after taking home the mirror ball trophy.
The radio personality, who won the 27th season of the ABC dance-off with Sharna Burgess in 2018, spoke out during an October 2026 episode of the He Said G Said podcast, where he gave his take on how the celebrity ballroom competition’s dance order is determined for the two-hour live show.
“The network would probably kill me for saying this,” Bones, 46, admitted. “If they’re putting you at the top of the hour, that means they want you to be seen. Because during [the live show] if they’ll put you at one or they’ll put you at the top of the second hour … people are flipping off of other channels if they’re watching linearly through television, if they left one show and they’re coming over to watch that second hour, you’re the first person they see.”
“So there’s strategy involved with who they put at the top of the show and who they’re putting at the very top of that next hour and who they’re putting at the end as well,” he added.
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Bones also noted that the DWTS dance order is not based on who is expected to win but added that in the case of some popular contestants, producers are definitely “showing them off on purpose.”
“I’ve never actually talked about that, but they do put you in places for that reason,” the DWTS Season 27 champ concluded.
In the past, some Dancing with the Stars pros have talked about the dance order. In 2012, Louis Van Amstel told ABC News that he liked to dance third because “we don’t have to go out first and yet we don’t have to wait so long before we perform.”
Over the years, fans have looked at the running order and dubbed the last dance of the night as the “pimp spot,” a showcase picked by producers to give one couple an edge.
Despite all of the speculation, former Dancing With the Stars pro dancer Cheryl Burke once said the show’s winners are determined fair and square.
“I can tell you that the show is not rigged despite what people might think,” Burke told Us Weekly in 2017. “The votes are 50/50 from the judges and the fans. That’s how this process works; the fans want to feel involved with their actual journey. If it were just up to the judges, I don’t know if so many people would tune in every week.”
Related: Sharna Burgess Says ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Cast ‘Gasped’ Over Week 4 Elimination
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