‘TV visits don’t work forever’: Are Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman leaving Strictly because they are about to be axed? | Strictly Come Dancing

When long-serving showrunners leave a seemingly timeless franchise, two questions immediately arise. Why are they going? Who will replace them?

On the first point, the BBC hopes the joint departure of Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly from Strictly Come Dancing can be attributed to longevity – Daly had a 21-year stint, Winkleman 11 as main co-host – and the impact of the weekend gig on family life.

However, if diaries and fatigue were the main reason for the hosts’ departure, the announcement would most likely have been made closer to the end of Season 23 in December. This weekend’s offers are only the fifth week out of 13.

And it’s undeniable – although the BBC would like it – that the appeal of 13 late Saturday nights with would-be Elstree people may have been dampened by almost two years of scandal or allegations about the alleged behaviour, language or preferred stimulants of some of the show’s participants. These titles didn’t affect the presenters, but if you dance with a skunk, it will affect your scent. At some point, customers may become concerned about contamination by association.

The question also arises in any relationship between host and show about the balance of dependency, and for Winkleman in particular, there can be no doubt that the show needs her now more than she does. It’s also up against The Traitors, the BBC’s biggest entertainment show since Strictly, and with the series likely to expand into its bizarre and stellar versions, it faces further pressure on its calendar.

But on the second question, about who the successors to Dalí and Winckelmann might be, I wouldn’t recommend betting your life savings on anyone in particular.

Without any inside knowledge on this point, what’s interesting to me is that the BBC’s statement that “plans for the next series will be announced in due course” could be seen as leaving open the possibility that there won’t be a 24th series of Strictly Come Dancing, or at least not next year.

There is a parallel here with another BBC One tyrant. Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who have always made interesting bedfellows because each is a superior reboot of a show from the 20th century – Come Dancing (1950-98) and the original Doctor Who (1963-89) – and in their second incarnations are less than a year apart in age: Strictly launched on 15 May 2004, and New Who on 26 March 2005. After two decades, both find themselves in limbo having lost their main artists and with details of the next tour still to be confirmed BBC statements leave existential questions open.

The argument that the BBC could not end such well-known programs assumes that successful television programs continue forever. They don’t.

Some, such as fish or other perishable food items, explode suddenly. In the late 1990s, Noel’s House Party, which had made Noel Edmonds a Saturday night ratings hit on BBC One, suddenly lost half its audience and all its media attention. In other cases, the presenters and the network lose their creative energy. Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, ITV’s main weekend entertainment rival to Strictly Come Dancing, was suspended for the foreseeable future earlier this year.

If there was any possibility of Strictly Come Dancing joining Ant & Dec and The Doctor in such a hiatus, it would make sense for Claudia and Tess to separate their departure and praise from any subsequent coverage of the entire show.

With viewing ratings at more than 6 million – lower than before but higher than most other terrestrial programs in an era defined by broadcasters – stopping the dancing would be a bold decision, but with the sense that some hostile media might be targeting the show week after week for bad news, the BBC may decide it and the production team need a break.

Since any 2026 schedule with a strict hiatus or restructuring would certainly feature The Traitors more, Winkleman is in a winning position. The comedy world points out that a dual act breakup can hurt one ex more than the other, so the shift is important for Daly. It would be surprising, and even professionally negligent, if no Winkle-Tess podcast appeared.