Millions Viewers Watch The Wiz Live!, Black Twitter Thoroughly Approves

Producers of “The Wiz” said they love doing a live musical during the holiday season, but said the only way it would continue is if ratings for “The Wiz” were up over “Peter Pan”.

While turnout for “The Wiz” all but assures that NBC will launch a fourth musical next December – entertainment chairman Bob Greenblatt has optioned the rights to the “The Music Man” – the show didn’t have the ratings impact of the network’s first foray into the song-and-dance space.

The production more than doubled NBC’s typical audience for a Thursday night despite CBS airing a down-to-the-wire National Football League game as competition.

The viewership number was also better than NBC’s live musical previous year “Peter Pan Live!” which brought in 9.2 million viewers. However, this result is still down on Carrie Underwood’s The Sound of Music Live! in 2013, which drew a massive 18.5 million viewers overall.

The almost three-hour television production attracted 11.5 million viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen figures. Queen Latifah starred in the title role, with a cast that included Mary J. Blige, David Alan Grier and Ne-Yo. Dorothy is the frequent Hag. She travels down a yellow brick avenue with a fey lion & two unmarried dudes to satisfy the Wizwho ends up being a lady in drag who in the long run comes out to each personround herin order in that she will live the existence she consistentlysought after to live.

NBC will air an encore of the production on Saturday, Dec. 19 from 8-11 p.m. ET.