‘The Wiz Live’ eases down the (ratings) road

The Shanice Williams musical was not only a stud in Thursday night’s ratings, it’s now the most-tweeted live special program in Nielsen history.

Shanice Williams, take your victory lap. “We should think it through and figure out what the next choice should be in the progression of, ‘What do you follow The Wiz with so we can keep moving forward and not backward?'” But they were a huge improvement over the ratings for last year’s musical, “Peter Pan”, which drew 9.1 million total viewers and 3 million 18-49ers.

Viewers weren’t the only ones who found last year’s NBC musical, Peter Pan Live, to be nothing to crow about. With Mary J. Blige as a deliciously nasty Evillene (the Wicked Witch of the West), Queen Latifah as The Wiz and Common as the Gatekeeper of Oz, here renamed Bouncer, campiness threatened, to be sure. NBC was able to charge premium rates for ads and, according to Nielsen, it also got lots of Twitter love – approximately 1.6 million individual tweets were sent during the broadcast. It was the Peacock Network’s best Thursday since 2010-apart from Carrie Underwood’s big night, of course. There was much online discussion about “The Wiz” having an all-black cast from people who may have been unaware that the 1970s-era musical and movie had a black cast, too.

NBC is going back down the yellow brick road.

Even so, “Wiz Live!” delivered a strong enough performance to probably ensure future live-musical telecasts on NBC.