Huh.
Given how astoundingly quickly my desire to watch this show completely divebombed over the past three seasons (28, 29, 30), I can’t say I’m going to miss it. Heck, I’ve been scrabbling for an excuse to never have to watch this over dinner again after you know who finished you know where, and it looks like the matter just got settled.
If I had to speculate as to why, my guess is that the key motives are escaping criticism and tightening up the voting blocs. They’ve taken plenty of heat for all the bad moves they made…bringing on right wingers, replacing Tom Bergeron with Tyra Banks, putting in lots of tedious fluff pieces, theme after theme after theme, etc. By restricting the show to a dedicated platform, they’re going to get a much better percentage of viewers who like all that junk. And by restricting voting to said platform, that means that only dedicated followers of DWTS have any say now, so results are going to be more in tune with the demographics Disney is trying to sell stuff to honest.
If I’m proven completely wrong, feel free to rub it in my face on this thread, to which I’ll quietly nod and go back to watching tool-assisted speedruns on YouTube.