The Wiz Live! Knocks Out Peter Pan
We know Twitter loved The Wiz Live!, and — as expected — the ratings did, too. NBC's third annual live musical event flew high above last year's Peter Pan Live, with more than 11 million households tuning in. That's 2 million more than Peter Pan Live.
What's more, Black Twitter made The Wiz Live! the #1 most social live special program since Nielsen Social began tracking Twitter TV activity in October 2011. 297,500 people sent 1.7 million Tweets about the show last night!
Packed with an all-star cast that included Queen Latifah, Common, Mary J. Blige, Ne-Yo,David Alan Grier, Uzo Aduba and newcomer Shanice Williams — who, after last night, is now a star in her own right — The Wiz Live! gave NBC the highest-rated Thursday (excluding sports) of any network since the ABC's Scandal and How to Get Away With Murder premiere night in 2014.
The ratings benchmark for the franchise is still the first one, The Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood. Though that event didn't get anywhere close to the critical and social media love asThe Wiz Live!, it did snag a whopping 18.6 million viewers.
While NBC has been shy to officially announce the live musicals as an annual event, we're pretty sure these ratings mean there'll be another one next year. Indeed, Fox is getting on the bandwagon with Grease Live on January 31, starring Keke Palmer.
Watch The Wiz Live! cast rehearse the show's most popular number, "Ease on Down the Road," below:
(Photo: Virginia Sherwood/NBC)