‘America’s Got Talent: The Champions’ Renewed For Season 2: Will it be as Successful as the First?
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America’s Got Talent: The Champions was a massive hit for NBC this past winter. It won the Monday night ratings game almost every week in January and February, and had very high viewership numbers, especially for a mid-season show. With results like those, it shouldn’t be a surprise that NBC announced this weekend that Champions has been renewed for a second season.
We don’t know when Season 2 is going to air yet, who will be on it, or how many episodes it will last for. We just know that it’s happening…and we’re a little surprised it is.
If the show was such a hit, why is its renewal somewhat of a surprise to us? Well, Champions felt like a one-time-only deal, or at least, a once-in-a-blue-moon deal. The show felt like a special event; they did call it “the Olympics of talent”, after all, and there’s a reason the Olympics are held every four years.
The AGT producers hand picked the 50 best and most iconic acts from Got Talent shows around the world to compete for the title of “Champion of Champions”. (Okay, maybe not everyone in the cast fell under this category, but the fact that the vast majority of them did is still kind of a miracle when you think about it.) It was a clash of Got Talent titans, the likes of which will likely never be recreated.
You can probably see where we’re heading with this: Season 2 has pretty much nowhere to go but down.
America’s Got Talent: The Champions had acts from iterations of the show from all around the world, but most of the acts were AGT alumni that the American audience already knew and liked. The options going forward are to have acts from Season 1 return (with the novelty of seeing them back likely having worn off to an extent) have lesser-known AGT acts on that the audience probably won’t be as invested in, or have a bunch of worldwide acts the audience doesn’t even know and won’t have a lot of time to get to know within the condensed format of Champions.
None of these routes are likely to produce the same level of anticipation or excitement as Season 1. That was pretty much lightning in a bottle, and there’s a reason it took 13 years of AGT before they did an all-star version. In order for another edition to have the same impact, they’d probably have to wait another 10 years.
However, one thing that would be cool is to bounce the idea around the world a bit and have other countries “host” it; there have been rumors of a Britain’s Got Talent: The Champions floating around, which would seem like a more exciting concept right now since that show would probably mainly consist of former BGT fan-favorites with acts from AGT and other versions of the show sprinkled in to round things out.
But the AGT brand is strong, and things will likely keep trucking on until they lose steam. Here’s hoping Season 2 of The Champions is a success and more worldwide acts can get their big break in America!
