NBC announces a slew of midseason shifts and changes to its schedule, including Go On to Thursdays and encores of The Voice on Sundays.
Winners for the 15th annual Costume Designers Guild Awards, which celebrate costume design excellence in film, television and commercials, were handed out Tuesday evening.
Smash, an NBC drama, was first considered a flop, but now is a ratings success among 18-49 viewers when live+7 ratings are factored in. On average, Smash added 2.5 million viewers over seven days of playback and averaged a 3.3 rating among 18-49s.
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The ratings for Smash have been a bit modest lately, but have overall managed to boost the network’s Monday night time slot at 10 p.m.
Despite flagging ratings — and a diss from the boss — the new show still holds promise for the third-place contender.
In a season in which NBC has a shaky grasp on third place — only the Super Bowl is saving the network from an ignominious spot at the bottom of the heap — and is in desperate need of a hit, Steve Burke picked a bad time to drop his guard. As Comcast wrapped its 4Q earnings call Tuesday, the NBCUniversal CEO offered an aside to an unknown interlocutor, saying, “I think Smash is problematic.”
Estimates are that NBC has spent as much as $25 million promoting Smash, a new series that the network hopes will be the hit it desperately needs.
The network is gambling big that the drama about turning Marilyn Monroe’s life into a musical will resonate with viewers and help pull it out of its ratings slump.
Last fall’s crop of new shows were a lot more promising than the previous year’s, and the same looks to be true of this year’s midseason offerings. Two new shows, Fox’s Napoleon Dynamite and Alcatraz, have already debuted to strong ratings, and the highly anticipated Feb. 5 debut of NBC’s Smash is expected to do the same.
NBC’s will begin streaming one of its biggest hopes for midseason, the Broadway drama Smash, three weeks before it premieres on-air. The strategy is becoming increasingly popular as a way of building buzz.
NBC’s fall schedule has been a disaster, even under the promising leadership of new NBC Entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt. But going into midseason there is some hope for NBC based largely on two music-themed shows, the new drama Smash, about the making of a Broadway musical, and the second-year reality program The Voice, which was a surprise hit last fall.
