• by Wayne Friedman , December 6, 2013

NBC may not have done well with early-season live programming, but its live musical “The Sound of Music” during this holiday period reversed that trend in a big way.

The live broadcast posted a strong Nielsen preliminary 4.6 rating/13 share among 18-49 viewers and 18.5 million overall viewers. It was NBC’s biggest Thursday night non-sports-related programming result in four years since the finale of “E.R.” in 2009.

All this lifted NBC to a rare Thursday night result, averaging a 4.6/13. CBS -- usually the top network on Thursdays -- got to a 2.5/7, followed by ABC at 2.2/6, Fox with 1.2/3, Univision at 1.0/3, and CW with 0.8/2.

“Sound of Music” took some of the steam out of Thursday night's usual highly-rated show, CBS' "The Big Bang Theory." It dropped to a 4.6/14 share from a 5.3/16 for its last original show in late November.

Some shows, however, seemed unaffected, such as ABC’s up-and-coming 10 p.m. drama “Scandal,” which added two-tenths of a rating point to hit 3.1/8.

“Big Bang Theory” and “Sound of Music” at 8 p.m. put lots of pressure on other 8 p.m. shows. ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” was at a 1.0/3; Fox’s “X-Factor” saw 1.3/4; and CW’s “Vampire Diaries” earned a 1.0/3.

Earlier this season, "The Million Second Quiz,” a limited-series live game show, debuted to soft results: 6.5 million viewers in September. It then lost more than half its audience a week later .