Rosie Live is a variety show

Variety show

A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts, especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling...

 starring Rosie O'Donnell

Rosie O'Donnell

Roseann "Rosie" O'Donnell is an American stand-up comedian, actress, author and television personality. She has also been a magazine editor and continues to be a celebrity blogger, LGBT rights activist, television producer and collaborative partner in the LGBT family vacation company R Family...

 that aired November 26, 2008 live from New York's Little Shubert Theatre

Little Shubert Theatre

The Little Shubert Theatre is located in New York City, near Broadway. Its address is 422 West 42nd Street between 9th Avenue and Dwyer Street. It was built in 2002 and has a seating capacity of 499....

 on NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. The family friendly program contained singing, dancing, comedy routines and specialty acts. However, poor critical response and ratings doomed the project, and it was not picked up as a series.

Production

It was produced by Universal Media Studios in association with O'Donnell's KidRo Productions. Rosie O'Donnell and David Friedman were the co-executive producers. The show was broadcast live in accordance with O'Donnell's preference for live programming instead of tape.

Guests

Ne-Yo

Ne-Yo

Shaffer Chimere Smith, Jr. , better known by his stage name Ne-Yo, is an American pop and R&B singer-songwriter, record producer, dancer and actor. Beginning his career as a songwriter, Ne-Yo penned the hit "Let Me Love You" for singer Mario...

 and Alanis Morissette

Alanis Morissette

Alanis Nadine Morissette is a Canadian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, record producer, and actress. She has won 16 Juno Awards and seven Grammy Awards, was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and also shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination...

 were the featured singers. Liza Minnelli

Liza Minnelli

Liza May Minnelli is an American actress and singer. She is the daughter of singer and actress Judy Garland and film director Vincente Minnelli....

 and Gloria Estefan

Gloria Estefan

Gloria María Milagrosa Fajardo García de Estefan; known professionally as Gloria Estefan is a Cuban-born American singer, songwriter, and actress. Known as the "Queen Of Latin Pop", she is in the top 100 best selling music artists with over 100 million albums sold worldwide, 31.5 million of those...

 performed duets with O'Donnell. Lombard Twins http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkiWCqUFJ3KMAobRXNyoA?p=%22Lombard+Twins%22&fr=yfp-t-501&ei=UTF-8&fp_ip=CA&pop=1&rd=r1&meta=vc%3Dca tap danced. Anti-gravity

Anti-gravity

Anti-gravity is the idea of creating a place or object that is free from the force of gravity. It does not refer to the lack of weight under gravity experienced in free fall or orbit, or to balancing the force of gravity with some other force, such as electromagnetism or aerodynamic lift...

performed a spinning act. The special also included performances by Rosie's Broadway Kids

Rosie's Broadway Kids

Rosie’s Theater Kids, formerly known as Rosie's Broadway Kids, is a non-profit arts education organization started by actress and comedian Rosie O’Donnell...

 and guest appearances by Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin

Kathleen Mary "Kathy" Griffin is an American actress, stand-up comedienne, television personality, New York Times best-selling author and an LGBT rights advocate. Griffin first gained recognition for appearances on two episodes of Seinfeld, and then for her supporting role on the NBC sitcom...

, Conan O'Brien

Conan O'Brien

Conan Christopher O'Brien is an American television host, comedian, writer, producer and performer. Since November 2010 he has hosted Conan, a late-night talk show that airs on the American cable television station TBS....

, Jane Krakowski

Jane Krakowski

Jane Krakowski is an American actress and singer. She is most well known for her performance of Elaine Vassal on Ally McBeal, for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award, and for her current role as Jenna Maroney on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock, for which she has been nominated for three Emmy...

, Harry Connick, Jr.

Harry Connick, Jr.

Joseph Harry Fowler Connick, Jr. is an American singer, big-band leader/conductor, pianist, actor, and composer. He has sold over 25 million albums worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with...

, Clay Aiken

Clay Aiken

Clayton Holmes "Clay" Aiken is an American singer, songwriter, actor, producer and author who began his rise to fame on the second season of the television program American Idol in 2003. RCA Records offered him a recording contract, and his multi-platinum debut album Measure of a Man was released...

, Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray

Rachael Domenica Ray is an American television personality, businesswoman, celebrity chef and author. She hosts the syndicated talk and lifestyle program Rachael Ray and three Food Network series, 30 Minute Meals, Rachael Ray's Tasty Travels and $40 a Day...

 and Alec Baldwin

Alec Baldwin

Alexander Rae "Alec" Baldwin III is an American actor who has appeared on film, stage, and television.Baldwin first gained recognition through television for his work in the soap opera Knots Landing in the role of Joshua Rush. He was a cast member for two seasons before his character was killed off...

.

Jennifer Cody

Jennifer Cody

Jennifer Cody , is an American dancer and actress.-Early life:Cody was born in Henrietta, New York. She began dancing at an early age. She studied acting at Fredonia State University...

 appeared in a skit featuring O'Donnell as "Officer Lockstock" and Cody as "Little Sally", a reference to the off-Broadway show Urinetown

Urinetown

Urinetown: The Musical is a satirical comedy musical, with music by Mark Hollmann, lyrics by Hollmann and Greg Kotis, and book by Kotis. It satirizes the legal system, capitalism, social irresponsibility, populism, bureaucracy, corporate mismanagement, and municipal politics...

. (Cody's husband, Hunter Foster

Hunter Foster

Hunter Foster is an American musical theatre actor/singer, librettist and playwright.-Early life:Foster was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, but raised in Augusta, Georgia and Troy, Michigan. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theatre Studies from the University of Michigan in 1992...

, was in the original cast of Urinetown and was on the writing staff for Rosie Live.)

Critical response

The show received almost universally negative reviews from critics. The Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

critic Mary McNamara wrote, "For those of us who are, and remain, Rosie fans, who think The View will never quite recover from her departure, who think her desire to resurrect the variety show was, and is, a great idea, disappointment does not even begin to describe it." TV Guide

TV Guide

TV Guide is a weekly American magazine with listings of TV shows.In addition to TV listings, the publication features television-related news, celebrity interviews, gossip and film reviews and crossword puzzles...

critic Matt Roush panned the show as "dead on arrival," while Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

wrote "If Rosie O'Donnell and company were consciously determined to strangle the rebirth of variety shows in the crib, they couldn't have done a better job of it than this pre-holiday turkey." The program finished in third place in its time slot, ahead of ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

 and The CW

The CW Television Network

The CW Television Network is a television network in the United States launched at the beginning of the 2006–2007 television season. It is a joint venture between CBS Corporation, the former owners of United Paramount Network , and Time Warner's Warner Bros., former majority owner of The WB...

 but behind Fox

Fox Broadcasting Company

Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...

 and CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

.

US Nielsen ratings

Episode Number	Episode	Rating	Share	Rating/Share Nielsen Ratings Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States... (18-49)	Viewers (millions)	Rank (Night)	Rank (Overall)
1	"Special/Pilot"	3.5	6	1.2/4	5.25	#3	#11

Cancellation

Initial plans were to, if the show had been successful, use the special as a pilot episode

Television pilot

A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...

 for a series of new Rosie Live episodes beginning January 2009, which would have made it the first traditional variety show to air as a regular series in the United States since The Wayne Brady Show

The Wayne Brady Show

The Wayne Brady Show was a variety show hosted by Wayne Brady that originally ran from August 8, 2001 to March 11, 2002 on ABC. Due to low ratings, the show was cancelled by ABC and reformatted into a daytime variety talk show for syndication...

in 2001, and the first on NBC since Marie

Donny & Marie (1976 TV series)

Donny & Marie was an American variety show which aired on ABC from January 1976 to January 1979. The show stars brother and sister pop duo Donny Osmond and Marie Osmond...

and the infamous Pink Lady and Jeff in 1980. However, Rosie Live did not return due to poor ratings. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/02/AR2008120203034_pf.html