Three years ago NBC started airing live musical events with The Sound of Music. The broadcast was such a success that it has become an annual holiday tradition. Now, NBC’s Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt is opening up about how the tradition came to be.
Recently, NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt spoke to Adweek.com about how NBC got into the live musical game any in the first place:
“A couple of years ago we started trying to figure out how do we do more holiday specials, because the iconic ones like A Charlie Brown Christmas are not gettable; they're in license for so long. It dovetails with drama series: If you start the third week in September, you can get nine episodes in the fall before you have to take a break because of production schedules. That means by December, a lot of your dramas are in repeats. We started thinking, can we supplement the schedule with some one-offs that are big events? The big idea three years ago was a musical, which we didn't know if it would ever work or not, much less be a perennial. We got in more and more of these, and they tend to work, so we built them into our overall budget.”
The network was also able to use to these big event shows to push the winter schedule, as Greenblatt added:
“If you're going to launch new shows in January, you don't want to be asleep at the wheel in December, because you don't have any audience to promote to. We would never have launched Shades of Blue or Superstore in the doldrums of January with The Voice being off if we hadn't had that promotional base. To have 13 million viewers in The Wiz and 15 million viewers in Dolly Parton to speak to, it's really effective.”
What do you think of NBC’s live musical events? What has been your favorite special so far? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of the page.
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