• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, March 16, 2017

And now, the opportunity I have waited decades for: To put Mr. T and Charo in the same sentence.

Here it comes: With Mr. T and Charo both competing in the new, upcoming “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC, this 24th edition of the show simply cannot miss.

The show has a live, two-hour premiere next Monday (March 20), starting at 8 p.m. Eastern. In case you have not yet heard, Mr. T and Charo are in it. For millions of people, they will be the most familiar names in the lineup of celebrity contestants.

If anyone reading that statement finds it debatable, then go ahead and debate it. I might be entirely wrong because, let’s face it, we all tend to view these things through the lens of our own experience.

For all I know, younger people have no idea who Mr. T or Charo are. But I also know that for many others, these two names are all this new “DWTS” will need to generate excitement in advance of its premiere next week.

Who else is on the show? Here’s a list of the names, but without any explanation of who they are so you can test whether or not they are instantly familiar to you -- like Mr. T and Charo.

The other contestants (known as the “stars”) are: Bonner Bolton, Chris Kattan, David Ross, Erika Jayne, Heather Morris, Nancy Kerrigan, Nick Viall, Normani Kordei, Rashad Jennings and Simone Biles.

Here they are, identified: Bonner Bolton, champion bull rider who became paralyzed in a rodeo accident, but recovered and is now back in rodeo competition; Chris Kattan, comic actor and one-time “Saturday Night Live” cast member; David Ross, former Major League Baseball player; Erika Jayne, cast member on “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”; Heather Morris, cast member on “Glee”; Nancy Kerrigan, Olympic figure skater (and victim in the infamous Tonya Harding attack scandal in 1994); Nick Viall, “The Bachelor”; Normani Kordei, member of the pop group Fifth Harmony; Rashad Jennings, NFL player; and Simone Biles, Olympic gymnast.

Of these, the only ones I did not have to look up online were Chris Kattan, Nancy Kerrigan and Simone Biles. I am sure others will have different experiences with this list of celebrities.

Pointing out here that some of the stars on “Dancing With the Stars” will be recognizable to some and not to others is not to denigrate any of them based on the level of their fame. 

For all I know, millions will see the name Normani Kordei on a list of “DWTS” contestants and hang Post-It notes all over the place reminding themselves to watch the show on Monday.

But it’s also possible that the nature of fame is different today than it used to be, particularly when it comes to personalities who made their names on TV when there were only three networks.

With the attention of all U.S. TV households focused on only three principal sources of television, Mr. T became one of the best-known celebrities of his era, mainly the 1980s. 

Charo’s fame goes even farther back to the celebrity variety shows, talk shows and game shows of the 1960s and ’70s. 

Back then, celebrities such as Mr. T and Charo could achieve the kind of ubiquity that doesn’t seem to be as common today. In the current era, fame seems more compartmentalized and less “mass” than it did in the decades before multichannel television and, of course, the Internet. 

On the other hand, the casting team at “Dancing With the Stars” probably assembles the show’s lineups of contestants with an eye toward attracting as wide an audience as possible. Their show’s attractiveness to a multigenerational audience is one of its best attributes.

With Charo (the ’60s and ’70s), Mr. T (the ’80s), Nancy Kerrigan and Chris Kattan (the ’90s), along with sports stars (Bolton, Ross, Jennings, Biles), two reality stars (Jayne and Viall) and a contemporary pop star (Kordei), the new edition of “Dancing With the Stars” would seem to have all of its bases covered.

To paraphrase Mr. T’s most famous line from “Rocky III,” I pity the fool who doesn’t watch it.