As the show has come to an end and NBC is still being very silent about whether they will cancel or renew Best Time Ever with NP, the official show’s website is still going strong. NBC is allowing anyone and everyone with internet access the ability to stream all the full episodes for free and catch up with what the missed on this first season, while also promoting their NBC app that is featured on Roku, Xbox and AppleTV as well on the main site of Best Time Ever. If you scroll further down, NBC features photo galleries from people to view depending on who hosted each show as a wing man to NPH and his side-kick beauty Nicole. The website itself if very basic and straightforward, only highlighting the About the Show, the Episodes, Photos and the Video clips. Each episode is entitled after the Guest star co-host who came, which seems a bit odd to me, as their part wasnt that great. Nevertheless, when you click on episodes it allows the drop down to click on Season 1, as if NBC is ready to add a Season 2 drop down any moment, once they give the go-ahead. NPH I am sure is shaking in his boots dying to know the answer to his own fate and his show.

On November 3, Neil Patrick Harris Tweeted that it was the last day of Best Time Ever season 1. I want to emphasize on Season 1, as if he knows something that we dont or maybe if just hopeful as it is his show and would be his disgrace if the variety show got cancelled after only one mediocre season. Throughout the season he used his own personal account to Tweet @BestTimerEver and hopefully rally some of his own fans and followers in the process, yet has been very quiet on Twitter since the last day of the show, not saying anything at all about the show itself or what is in store for him next. The handle of @BestTimeEver has still be tweeting thought, even though the show already had its finale episode. They continue to show memes of NPH or the side-kick Nicole encouraging those to binge watch episodes to catch up on what they missed on on all season.  The Twitter handle has around 25,000 followers and only tweeted about 1,550 times from preseason to present day.

There has still be no word with whether Best Time Ever has been cancelled or renewed for the next season, yet the Washington Post told readers to not get too attached as it is a variety show that is just not quite adding up the the flair of newly released scripted shows. The Washington Post challenged NBC as they pose the question how much longer they will keep this show running, with only 4 million people tuning in each week.

Best Time Ever may have had some lackluster due to its scheduling slot. Instead of maybe capturing the fans and viewers of The Voice, best Time Ever did not position themselves after The Voice but rather after Chicago med which comes directly behind The Voice, possibly losing those who have no interest in medicine and thus change their channel, leaving NBC. At the 10pm slot it only competes with new scripted show Limitless on CBS and then Beyond the Tank on ABC. Limitless is surpassing the ranking of Best Time Ever time and time again as it has been averaging a 1.6 rating with viewers 18-49 range. NBC may have needed to recognize that yet they had no way of knowing how successful CBS’s new show would be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/11/03/which-new-fall-tv-shows-are-basically-dead-already-a-complete-guide/

That’s a wrap folks. Well at least for this season. Best Time ever with NPH has come to its finale episode for its first season. There has been no word yet if it will be picked up for a second season, as the network has been very quiet up to this point. Of course the ratings have not been through the roof, even with last week’s ratings coming in at an all-time low for its time slot, yet with the time change one would hope that they would have all the kinks worked out for a new season, with even more fun-filled celebrity guests appearances. NPH appeared on The Today Show this week just days before this finale to discuss the upcoming show and he seemed to look quite frazzled and stressed. Even the host Savannah Guthrie seemed concerned at his appearance and his overall well-being in preparation for such a live event, as he remained calm, cool and collected and responded, “even if its a disaster, it will be hilarious.”

Former All My Children star Kelly Ripa (LIVE with Kelly and Michael) joins Neil Patrick Harris in the primetime slot as the celebrity guest announcer for Best Time Ever yesterday, Tuesday October 27th at 10pm. Kelly Ripa helped guide viewers through the Halloween-themed episode from the studio’s guest announcer booth. Kelly Ripa is seen daily on her own show, surprisingly on another network:ABC. ABC of course is owned and operated by DisneyABCMedia Group which is a rival of NBCUniversal who is running Best Time Ever. I am curious to see how NBC was able to get her on the show crossing over her already established ABC contract, just in time for Halloween. Ray Parker Jr. also joined the stage for “Singalong Live” with the Academy Award-nominated theme song to “Ghostbusters” where three home viewers challenged and completed for a chance at winning $1,000. Another segment entitled “Neil Versus” had NPH and his child doppelganger “Little NPH” against Pussycat Doll sidekick Nicole Scherzinger and “Little Nicole” in a game moderated by another NBCUniversal tv show host, Meredith Vieira (The Meredith Vieira Show). The season finale is next week November 3rd. Looking forward to seeing what they have in store to knock it out of the park in order to get renewed.

Media Post blog begins with, “What does a guy have to do to get a rating around here?” Neil Patrick Harris in their mind seems to be exasperated by the amount of time and effort he seems to be putting into his show in ever possible capacity. While participating in fire-eating performance, while continuing to sing and dance like a monkey. And yet, the show has mediocre ratings that no one is mentioning at all. Last night was the sixth episode and at its new time of 8 p.m. Eastern, the ratings seem to have settled in at around 4.5 million viewers per show. The weeks previously, viewership was 4.45 million on Oct. 6, for the show’s fourth episode –which was the last one airing at 10 p.m. Eastern. The next week on Oct. 13, the show began airing at 8 p.m. and drew about the same audience — 4.48 million, to be exact. In the demo (18-49), the show scored a 1.3 on Oct. 6 and a 1.2 on Oct. 13. In comparison, the show’s premiere on Sept. 15 drew 6.6 million viewers and an 18-49 rating of 1.8. In its second week on Sept. 22, viewership dropped to 5.91 million, but the demo rating went up to 2.1. And now its audience is remaining in the mid-4 millions. Maybe NBC and NPH are just warming up especially with the new time slot but cmon,  What’s a guy have to do to get a rating? That we still have yet to discover.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/260726/harris-gives-it-his-all-but-best-time-ever-rati.html

It looks like NBC is trying to reach over the aisle and enter a new market of targeted viewers: the heterosexual male. NPH conducted an interview with Sports Illustrated’s Andy Gray to publicize and promote the show Best Time Ever, probably partnering with that specific magazine to encourage those who read and keep up with Sports Illustrated. NPH of course has a repertoire on the arts front which is a cross over for women and all other males in the creative/ artistic world of Broadway, music, theater, etc, yet his decline would presumably be at being relateable to the those men who have no focus on the arts and only on last nights game. The strategy here is remarkable for NBC to gather more viewers and such a targeted audience at that, even though NPH comments on his favorite sport as “tennis” and his favorite athletes “alent-wise, it’s Andy Roddick or Rafael Nadal. Looks-wise, it’s Cristiano Ronaldo” which heterosexual males would probably not comment on looks of a player but of course NPH is still being NPH. The conversation quickly becomes diverted from “Best Time “to “How I met your mother” and becomes more of a personal mantra of his preferences, favorite food, favorite Beatles song etc, which seemingly will not help the overall viewership of his new endeavor.

The network did a bold move recently thought by changing the time slot it aired, moving it to its new time Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT just before The Voice. NPH says that the move is ” a nice way to look at the last four episodes that we’ve done and really start refining what worked and trying to address what didn’t. And I think it will be an easy thing to accomplish with Jack Black on board. With him comes super-fun energy, amusement and that gung-ho, I’ll-do-anything attitude, which is pretty appropriate for our show.” The show itself is about half-way through its fall season and we look forward to seeing where this new time slot will take us and if the male viewers will tune in or not.

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/10/12/neil-patrick-harris-interview-best-time-ever

To everyone’s surprise, the show may be wheeling and dealing but on the social media front, the show is really lacking in gumption and following. With only 21, 000 Twitter followers, and only 680 Favorited tweets, the show isn’t chirping enough just yet. On Facebook however, there are 175,394 Total page likes which appears that maybe their viewers are just not “tweeters” or specifically in a certain age group where Twitter has not yet reached. The jump in Facebook likes went up by 2.4% just this week alone, so maybe the traction of adding celebrity guest appearances is also bringing up their viewership and expanding horizons of demographics who have not followed the show thus far. ON Facebook alone, 26,494 people have been talking about the show, whether tagging the Best Time Ever page itself or using the hashtag.

This week apparently had three major parts with an abundance of talent to stop by. Shaq, the legendary NBA player, joined NPH as a guest announcer throughout the show was able to do suprise cameo appearances. NPH then led a faux- Real Housewives of Richmond, VA and brought the Bravo network to the stage leading the way, Andy Cohen, Kyle Richards, Lisa Vanderpump, Cynthia Bailey, Kenya Moore and Bethenny Frankel to participate in being pranksters.The culmination of the night was a Singalong Live with Gloria Estefan and three lucky at-home contestants. As a Broadway fan, I know that Gloria Estefan;s new Broadway sensation “Get on your Feet” is in the stages of being released so i am sure NBC teamed up to allow her this opportunity as it provides good press for that upcoming play featuring her songs.

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/

On September 15th, 2015 Neil Patrick Harris premiered his first show of Best Week Ever on NBC and the ratings favored in decently well. The first show of the 22 that will air over this fall followed the season finale of “America’s Got Talent” which may have led to the precursor of folks at home continuously watching and not flipping channels after the premiere to stay tuned for this new unexpected show and to see what it was all about. The hour long variety show averaged a 1.9 rating/7 share in adults from 18-49 and 6.8 million viewers overall in the 10 o’clock hour according to national estimates from Nielson, which led to their win of their overall time slot in each category. The show went from a 2.0 in the demo at 10:00pm to a 1.7 at the 10:30pm marker which Variety concludes as a fairly low drop for a show in the late hour coming out of a higher rated program.

The show itself consisted of seemingly random segments that consistently had no common thread such as a random couple whom NBC had been following for months, showing old clips of them and old photographs, Reese Witherspoon casually guest MCing from a high rise booth above the audience, Nicole Scherzinger’s 15 second strip tease to the audience to her own PussyCat doll song “Dont Cha.”  The 90s commercial icon Carrot Top held his own guest appearance, while Gloria Gaynor belted “I will Survive” with audiences participating in the SingAlong segment in their own homes. One audience member at the end played a questions and number game and won prizes and trips, as a trip to Paris and Jeep give away were on the table for her to win. NPH even challenged Reese to a obstacle course suspended in the air that fed into a zipline. But even with all of the “seemingly exciting” fast paced movements from the list above the show itself was slow moving and lots of mundane dialogue but Neil Patrick Harris. Looking forward to next week’s show and what new surprises they whip out!