Country music is the only genre that kept coal out of the broadcast networks’ Christmas stockings during the holiday season.
When prime-time network TV takes a break from regularly scheduled programming between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the only consistent winner has been country music the last two years. A Garth Brooks special on CBS in December attracted 8.5 million viewers, just a bit behind Blake Shelton’s special for NBC a year ago.
ABC’s “CMA Country Christmas” enjoyed a small bump in 2013, as did Fox’s telecast of the American Country Awards. The strongest performer among the regular programs was “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” which gained in the ratings in both 2012 and 2013.
NBC’s staging of “The Sound of Music” with Carrie Underwood decked the halls of NBCUniversal so much that entertainment president Robert Greenblatt intends to stage another family-friendly musical next year with the same producing team of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. (One added benefit: The Sony Masterworks soundtrack sold 67,000 copies in December, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)
Greenblatt also discovered that “The Sing-Off” works better in a limited run between the holidays than as a full-season regular show. While the program lost almost half its audience that tuned in when it premiered, its average audience of 4.4 million total viewers was 28% better than the shows in the same time slots in 2012.
The two singing competitions that air in the fall were down as well, with the “X Factor” finale on Dec. 18 dropping 39% from 2012 and the Dec. 19 results show dipping 36%. “The Voice” still dominates Tuesday night in the 18-49 demographic, pulling in 5 million in the demo on Dec. 17. But its Monday number (Dec. 16), 4.2 million viewers in the demo, was the smallest audience for a performance finale in its five seasons.
CBS moved “The Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!” to Friday from Wednesday and took a small hit in the ratings.
CBS Entertainment executive VP of specials and events Jack Sussman says the move to Friday gave the network the opportunity to promote the special starting with Sunday afternoon’s NFL coverage up until the concert telecast’s lead-in, “Hawaii Five-O.”