Anna Kendrick Live Tweeted ‘The Wiz’ And It Was Everything

Last night’s event special The Wiz Live! drew 11.1 million total viewers for NBC, according to Nielsen’s fast national numbers, and was the top program of the day on social media. But the buzz wasn’t all good; the show also sparked a racial controversy online.

NBC featured a live showing of The Wiz Live!

The Wiz Live! will have an encore presentation on NBC Saturday, December 19 at 8pm.

Joy Behar said she thought “The Wiz Live!” was “fabulous”, and Candace Cameron Bure said she thought there were some lighting issues but overall she enjoyed the performances. Shanice Williams, newcomer to the stage, showed off her fantastic vocal skills as Dorothy, keeping up with every one of the classic songs along the way.

The Nielsen company ratings represented a rebound for the network, which had two million fewer viewers for last year’s production of “Peter Pan”.

In the key demo of adults 18-49, the live musical scored a 3.4 rating, which is almost triple NBC’s season average rating on Thursday nights (excluding sports) and beat “Peter Pan” (2.4) by 42 percent. However, it was behind NBC’s first live TV musical, “The Sound of Music Live!” which brought in 18.6 million viewers in 2013. I did love hearing, when Queen Latifah’s Wiz (a knockout, by the way) was unmasked, “We’ve been played”.

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