Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 12/22/2011 at 4:02 PM News

The Popdust Files: drake, nbc, New Year's Eve, new year's special, tony bennett

It’s been tough sledding for NBC in 2011—aside from summer breakout hit The Voice, they haven’t found much luck with new shows, and have even seen a couple old standbys like Law & Order: SVU and The Biggest Loser start to slip in the ratings, landing the channel in dead last among the four big networks. Emblematic of their ongoing struggles is the recent announcement of two of the musical headliners of their New Year’s Eve special, hosted by Carson Daly: Drake and Tony Bennett, who join Voice co-stars Blake Shelton and Cee Lo Green and fellow late-night personalities Jimmy Fallon and The Roots in the special’s lineup. No problem with that, of course—both artists are good gets, and should be sizable TV draws.

But then, of course, you have to look at the lineup ABC is trotting out for their Ryan Seacrest and Ghost of Dick Clark-hosted special. Lady Gaga leads off a cast that also includes Nicki Minaj, LMFAO, Gym Class Heroes, Hot Chelle Rae, Florence and the Machine, Pitbull, Blink-182 and several others. Oh, but you guys got Drake and Tony Bennett? And a couple of the guys from that show in between Idol and X Factor? And Jessie Fuckin’ J??? Great! Maybe we’ll switch over to you for a minute during commercial breaks!

Sorry, NBC. We know it’s the holidays, and we don’t wanna do you like this—we still love Saturday Night Live and Parks and Recreation and Community and whatnot. (Shit, Community got pulled? Our bad.) Hopefully you can add a couple more names to flesh out the roster and hopefully at least put up a respectable loss to the big boys. No shame in getting beaten by the best, you know.