Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris debuted on this week’s broadcast leaderboard after millions watched Neil team up with his “second favorite Jonas brother,” “Joe Jonas and Britney Spears for an elaborate prank on her apparent bodyguards. From the week of Monday, Sept 21, 2015- Sunday, Sept 27, 2015, Best Time Ever ranked 8th in Digital Audience Ratings in 2,339,000 million viewers coming behind Grey’s Anatomy and in from of Once Upon a Time. This week NPH kicked off the show right, no pun intended as he backflipped off a pogo stick and learned some trampoline choreography, but the Wall Street Journal comments that those stunts hardly compared to the “challenge of keeping up with the momentum of his weekly variety show.”  This third episode of the newly aired seasoned show leapt in the ratings last week in its time slot after The Voice. NPH even paid homage to the original series in which Best Time Ever was adapted from the British show Ant & Dec Saturday Night Takeaway.

How does the host think they are doing thus far? Well, Harris explained to the Wall Street Journal, “in the premiere episode, which was really everyone’s first chance to take a look at it, we jammed a lot of content into 42 minutes. But I think the show deserved to let you catch your breath a little bit and have it be more conversational. I want the show to feel like a runaway train, but I don’t want it to be so intense and frantic that it puts you off.” I completely agree. The first show felt very overwhelming and uncomfortable at times as if they were striving to beat the clock before a commercial break. Less explaining and more doing would work best to capture audiences in my mind. NPH seems to guess that technology is still a hinderance for some of their pranks and situations where they are skyping in audience members and thus often internet and signals get in the way of a LIVE television broadcast, yet the pranking must go on. NPH said “Pranking by nature seems negative- laughing at someones ridiculous behavior as they try to figure out whats going on. I’m not into those kind of pranks.”  There is something to say for sure about the show being a LIVE production and they bells and whistles that come along with that. NBC and NPH hope to capture the essence of “what if” “what will happen” etc as millions are watching who will win the money, will the audience on the couch be surprised, what will NPH say next? If the show was pre-recorded, a lot of that authentic flare would be lost. It seems that from the first show to now, big strides are being made and kept to keep Best Time Ever climbing the chart. Lets see where they end up next week.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/09/29/best-time-ever-host-neil-patrick-harris-on-the-learning-curve-of-live-tv/