As was mentioned yesterday in our fall TV post, NBC has climbed up the rankings and is now fighting it out with ABC for the #2 spot among the major networks. And according to Vulture, they might be setting themselves up for the edge now by giving Neil Patrick Harris, the most Entertainer-with-a-capital-E entertainer currently working, his own variety show on the network …
NBC and ITV execs have confirmed the Harris news. Peacock alternative TV head Paul Telegdy told Vulture that he’s been looking to get a variety series on the network for a long time, and that Harris has always been at the top of his list of potential hosts. “We have a natural affinity for this type of show. It’s in our DNA,” the exec said of NBC, which is currently home to varietylike shows such as The Voice, Saturday Night Live, America’s Got Talent, and The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. Under current entertainment chief Bob Greenblatt, Telegdy noted, NBC has also added big live events such as last year’s Sound of Music and the upcoming Peter Pan. “There’s a natural progression with this,” he said. “This is something we felt was undeniably an NBC proposition.”
I think there’s been a resurgence of classic television entertainment, like live shows and variety shows, almost as a sort of backlash to reality TV. You can really only put the worst aspects of humanity on TV for so long — and watch the ensuing disaster as unstable people with unstable amounts of power make terrible decisions — before you realize that we probably shouldn’t be rewarding mediocrity anymore. So yes, give the trained actor / dancer / singer / everything his own show and let him do what he’s spent his entire life training to do–it’ll be worth it.