NBC Finds a Winner In The Voice, beats Idol in ratings

[Miguel]

The cellphone of NBCUniversal’s chief executive, Stephen B. Burke, rang early the morning of April 28 last year. Alan Wurtzel, the company’s president of research, was so excited that he had trouble speaking. “We got a 5.1,” he finally said. Mr. Burke was at the gym, and given the background noise, he figured he wasn’t hearing correctly. “I said, we got a 5.1 in the key demographic,” Mr. Wurtzel repeated, which meant that Nielsen estimated that 11.8 million viewers in the all-important 18-to-49 demographic had tuned in — a breakout number for a new show.

Even though it was just 4:15 a.m. in Los Angeles, Mr. Burke called his newly anointed chairman of NBC Entertainment, Robert Greenblatt. “This is the best day since the birth of my last child,” Mr. Burke said.

...This week “The Voice” emerged as the unlikely winner of its own reality competition. With a 6 rating, it displaced Fox’s long-running “American Idol” as America’s top-rated television series. There was no official celebration at NBC, but “if you were in 30 Rock, every person felt great that day,” Mr. Burke told me this week, a reference to NBC’s headquarters at Rockefeller Center. “There was an electricity in the building.”

A change of the guard at the pinnacle of network television presents a rare opportunity — and poses some major challenges — for any network, but especially NBC, which has been so far behind for so long. If its success continues, “The Voice” could join legendary reality-show hits like “American Idol,” which propelled Fox to its eight-year run as the nation’s top-ranked network...

And “The Voice” may well determine history’s judgment on Comcast’s $30 billion 2011 acquisition of 51 percent of NBCUniversal’s assets from General Electric and the stewardship of Mr. Burke, who championed the deal and was Comcast’s chief operating officer before taking over at NBC.

...A struggling NBC had been looking for a rival to “American Idol” for years when NBC’s former entertainment president, Jeff Gaspin, brought an intriguing new concept from the Dutch television producer John de Mol to Jeff Zucker, then NBC’s chief executive, in 2009. NBC had been outbid by Fox for “The X-Factor,” Simon Cowell’s new “Idol” rival, which it had desperately wanted. But the new show had been a big hit in the Netherlands, and it came with a twist: celebrity judges who didn’t see the contestants until their chairs swiveled around. In the Dutch version, the chairs were red. The catch was the cost: more than $2 million an episode. Mr. Zucker, acting largely on impulse, gave it the go-ahead.

Mr. Zucker never saw a finished episode. In January last year, after the Comcast deal closed, Mr. Burke replaced Mr. Zucker and tapped Mr. Greenblatt, a former entertainment president at the Showtime cable network.

“Bob called me and said, ‘The way to do this is bigger and better: bigger sets, better coaches, spend more money,’ ” Mr. Burke recalled this week. At the time, spending more money was the last thing Mr. Burke wanted to hear. But “the show felt interesting, with very broad appeal,” he said. “And it was all we had between then and the fall. I figured this was our one chance. So I backed Bob and we bet big on it.”

Anticipation started to build internally. Christina Aguilera, a major star, signed on as one of the coach/judges. Mark Burnett, who produced “Survivor” and created “The Apprentice,” lavished time and attention on the new production. “This is the first show I’ve worked on in a long time I think can really break through,” he told Mr. Burke.

Mr. Burke showed a rough cut of an episode to his five children, and they loved it. Still, after so many disappointments at NBC, expectations were muted. “I knew it was entertaining and special as we were editing it,” Mr. Greenblatt told me. “But until you put it out there for the world, you don’t know. If we could just get a low- to mid-3 rating, we would have been thrilled. Then it exploded.”

With the success of the first season, which ended in May, Mr. Burke wanted “The Voice” to be the centerpiece of NBC’s fall lineup. Mr. Greenblatt and Paul Telegdy, who oversees NBC’s reality shows, resisted. They wanted more time to audition new contestants, and to refine and expand the show. “I said, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Mr. Burke recalled. “Only once in a while do you get a show that breaks out like this. Plus, we don’t have anything else. They argued very strongly that we needed more time to find the right singers, retool the show. I said: ‘This is going to be the longest fall (season) in your business career. It’s going to be so painful.’ ”

Holding the show until February gave NBC the chance to promote “The Voice” during the Super Bowl (the network, which broadcast the game, gave the show a one-minute spot, which cost it $7 million in revenue) and use the blockbuster sports event, which attracted more than 111 million viewers, as a lead in to the first episode.

...The Voice” drew more than 19 million viewers in the 9 p.m. hour — and beat that week’s episodes of “American Idol.”

Those numbers may have mostly reflected the Super Bowl halo effect. Still, “we realized ‘The Voice’ was going up and ‘Idol’ was not going up,” Mr. Burke said. “I realized there was a chance we might be the No. 1 show. But we didn’t allow ourselves to think about it until the third episode.”

Mr. Greenblatt agreed that he “never thought about it being the No. 1 show,” and added: “It’s dangerous to predict things and then be disappointed.”

On Feb. 13, “The Voice” narrowly trailed “American Idol” in the ratings. Then, a week later, on Feb. 20, it scored a 6 rating on Monday, while “Idol” plunged to just 5.1 on Wednesday, nearly a full point behind. After eight years of ratings dominance by “Idol,” American television had a new top-rated series in “The Voice.”

Several television executives I spoke to agreed that there was an incalculable value to having the No. 1 show. “Beating ‘Idol’ is important,” Mr. Burke said. Before “The Voice” rose to the top spot in ratings, a 30-second spot was $250,000, while a spot on top-rated “American Idol” was over $500,000. Mr. Burke noted: “The variable costs don’t change. So revenue doubles when you’re the No. 1 show.” And “The Voice” can serve as a platform to introduce other NBC shows, as it has done this season with “Smash.” “The show has very broad appeal and it’s very young,” Mr. Burke said. “It’s going to be a big foundational thing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/busine...ted=1&_r=1

I find it interesting that after the first season the creators resisted putting it on again in the fall because they "needed more time to find the right singers." But this year The Voice will begin airing in the fall as well.