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
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