As TV ratings continue to decline, networks are looking for surefire ways to draw audiences. Live programming, combined with social media, is seen as one way to combat fragmentation.
Live programs are ever-present in one format: sports. To wit, Tuesday night’s Game Six of the NBA Finals — which turned out to be the clincher for the Golden State Warriors — drew the largest audience of any NBA final in history for ABC, with TKTK viewers tuning in.
Networks hope to bring that kind of edge-of-your seat action to entertainment programming. Hence why we are seeing an onslaught of live musicals — The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, The Wiz and Grease — and even comedies trying on all-live formats.
This summer, Fox will roll out live unscripted show Knock Knock Live, while NBC making a bold move with its conversion of comedy Undateable into an all-live program this fall, the first time a network has aired a live comedy since Fox’s Roc in 1992. And Neil Patrick Harris will star in NBC’s live variety show, Best Time Ever, on Tuesday nights this fall.
“The fact that live TV gives people the opportunity to go to their devices and go to (social) platforms and be part of the action is something that didn’t happen a generation ago,” veteran producer Neil Meron told Variety. “I think the advent of social media is really enhancing the live-TV experience.”
Meron and his producing partner Craig Zadan have become known as the go-to guys when it comes to live programming, with three Oscars telecasts and NBC’s The Sound of Music: Live! and Peter Pan: Live! under their belts.
The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood, especially caught people off-guard, with 18.47 million viewers tuning in. While Peter Pan: Live! didn’t do as well in the ratings, it killed it on Twitter, with viewers (this author included) tweeting nearly 475,000 tweets that were seen 106.9 million times, marking almost twice the social engagement of Sound of Music. That said, the second-time around, people were hip to the fun of joining the Twitter community during the musical’s live broadcast.
This fall, Meron and Zadan will be back at it with The Wiz: Live!
Fox also is taking a page from that experiment, airing Grease: Live, starring Julianne Hough as Sandy and Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo, on January 31.
Says Bill Lawrence, who’s taking on the challenge of producing an all-live sitcom: “It might be a disaster but there’s no possible way it’ll be boring.”
Read more: Variety
Brief Take: Like everything else in television, everyone runs after the next big thing. Live TV is a good way to bring viewers to the set but too much live television will turn what’s currently unique and rare into something that’s commonplace and thus uninteresting.
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