Source: USA TODAY

Danielle Bradbery is The Voice.

The 16-year-old country singer from Cypress, Texas, triumphed in the fourth-season finale of the NBC singing competition, winning the viewer vote Tuesday over the other two finalists: Michelle Chamuel, 26, and the Swon Brothers, Colton, 24, and Zach, 27. Chamuel finished second and the Swon Brothers came in third.

After her name was announced, Bradbery told host Carson Daly that she was thankful but speechless before closing the show with Sara Evans’ Born to Fly. She had performed that song in Monday’s competition finale.

More than an hour later, Bradbery described her moment of victory.

“Me and Michelle were holding onto each other, shaking,” she said on the post-finale red carpet. “When I heard my name, I could not believe it. It’s going to take a while to sink in, but I’m just embracing the moment while it’s here.”

Bradbery said fans “were all so supportive and hopefully I touched a lot of hearts out there to vote for me and keep supporting me. Hopefully, that worked. They’ve been sticking by my side forever and hopefully will continue to.”

The victory by Bradbery, the second female and the youngest singer to win The Voice, represents the third triumph in four seasons for a member of coach Blake Shelton’s team.

“I wanted to make sure that Nashville respected her as much as they could,” country singer Shelton said after the show. “Obviously, she’s an incredible vocalist, but I wanted them to know that she respects country music and that’s why we kept throwing it back to artists from 10-20 years ago … showing Nashville that she can do that stuff, she can do new stuff. She can perform with Hunter Hayes, she can sing with me. Whatever it is you throw at her she’s capable of doing.”

He thinks Bradbery has a big career ahead of her. Bradbery said she would like to work with Shelton in the future.

“I see us standing here talking about her 20 years from now,” Shelton said. “And I wouldn’t say that with this confidence about anybody else that’s ever been on this show. Danielle Bradbery is a gift to the music industry and definitely a gift to The Voice.”

Shelton said it has been his goal “since Day One” to have a country singer win. That genre was strong in this season’s finale, represented by Bradbery and the Swon Brothers, the show’s most successful duo to date. Both finalists were under the tutelage of Shelton.

“Country fans are loyal, they are amazing and they like to stick by you through everything. I love it,” Bradbery said.

The two-hour finale featured a range of musical stars, including Cher, who sang Woman’s World, the first single of her upcoming album, Closer to the Truth. She recorded her performance in front of The Voice studio audience just before Tuesday’s live broadcast.

After the show, the legendary singer said her first performance before a TV audience in more than five years was “very exciting and it makes you feel elated but it’s also kind of scary. And I’m a big chicken anyway. I like being on it. I just don’t like going on it.”

She said a show like The Voice can help young performers.

“I think shows like this might help you skirt a lot of the bad stuff that could be waiting for you. It’s a great place to go and be seen by everybody and have that feeling that you can actually can do it,” she said. “Sonny (Bono) and I used to play bowling alleys and roller skating rinks. And that was hard to keep telling ourselves, ‘We were good, we were good, we were good.’ “

Pitbull and Christina Aguilera opened the show with a duet and country’s Florida Georgia Line and hip-hop’s Nelly performed together. Bruno Mars sang his newest single, Treasure, which was taped before the recent death of his mother.

The finalists got their chance to perform with the stars, too. Bob Seger, joined by the Swon Brothers, performed his hit Night Moves. Hayes and Bradbery sang a duet of I Want Crazy and Chamuel and OneRepublic performed Counting Stars.

The Voice switched coaching gears this season, with Usher and Shakira taking over for original coaches Aguilera and CeeLo Green. The two were well received.

Aguilera and Green, who appeared in the first three seasons, will rejoin the show for its fifth cycle this fall, with Usher and Shakira trading off with them for the sixth edition. Coaches Shelton and Adam Levine have been with the show from the start.

The Voice audience is down 1% for Season 4, with an average of 12.4 million viewers, but it beat Fox’s longtime juggernaut American Idol among advertiser-coveted young adults. Idol still draws more viewers, but it has experienced sharp erosion over the past two seasons.

The singing competition, which stands out for its blind auditions and spinning red chairs, is produced by Mark Burnett.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Cher gave fans a sampling of her latest musical effort Tuesday.

The famed singer performed Woman’s World, the first single on her upcoming album, on the fourth-season finale of NBC’s The Voice. Later, on the post-show red carpet, she talked about the album, Closer to the Truth (Warner Bros. Records), which is scheduled to be released on Sept. 24.

“I actually did a couple of different things in this album. I ventured into places I haven’t gone and I really enjoyed that,” she said. “I kind of took some chances in this album and then when they turned out to be good, I was really happy.”

She described the album, her first since 2002′s Living Proof, as “very eclectic. The songs are good songs that just happen to be together.”

The musical choices came from a variety of sources, she said.

“The first song was actually Woman’s World. Then Pink gave me a beautiful song. And then Mark (Taylor), the man that produced almost all of the Believe album, he came with four great songs,” she said. “There was a beautiful country song that I really loved. And there was a song that a friend of mine and I wrote for Interview with a Vampire that got turned down. And I thought, ‘We should do that song. It’s such a great song.’ “

A concert tour remains a possibility. “We’re talking about it,” she said.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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If Drop Dead Diva‘s title character can come back to life, why can’t the show?

After being canceled in January, the Lifetime drama returns Sunday (9 p.m. ET/PT) with its fifth-season premiere, Back From the Dead.

Diva‘s path seems fitting to creator Josh Berman, who created the series about Deb, a vain model who dies only to have her soul transfer to the deceased body of brilliant, plus-sized attorney Jane (Brooke Elliott).

“Personally, I feel the show itself is about second chances, it’s about Deb coming to life as Jane and getting a second chance,” he says. “We look at the show as having a second chance.”

Diva is the most recent show to experience life after cancellation. AMC’s The Killingreturned for a third season this month after its apparent demise, and Arrested Development, which Fox dropped in 2006, staged a comeback in May, courtesy of Netflix.

Diva‘s cancellation was the result of a financial impasse between Lifetime and studio Sony Pictures Television, and the show was revived after the cable network and studio came up with “a new financial model” that lowered the network’s price tag, says Lifetime executive vice president Rob Sharenow. Berman says producers found ways for the show to reduce costs “without affecting the end product.”

Fans who’d expressed disappointment with the cancellation via petition and social media played a role in the revival, Sharenow says. “We definitely responded to the fans. There was a lot of fan disappointment that the show wasn’t coming back. That was a big part of the decision.”

Diva averaged 2.3 million viewers during Season 4, about even with the previous season.

The fourth-season finale, last season’s most-watched episode, ended in a cliffhanger, with Jane searching for her missing fiance amid the impending arrival of Jane’s original soul in a new body.

“It would have been horrible for me as a writer and as a TV fan to end the show the way we did last year,” Berman says. “I’m so happy I could write the season that I wanted to write. … It’s almost like the first four seasons were leading up to this moment.”

That includes the arrival of Jane’s new guardian angel, the handsome, well-built Paul (Justin Deeley).

“The notion was that as Jane grows, the angel would be a counterpoint to whatever she’s going through in her life,” Berman says. “Now that Jane is really comfortable with who she is as Jane, what if the angel was a male embodiment of Deb, the woman Jane was before she became Jane, a vapid but beautiful creature?”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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The bloodshed continued in Game of Thrones‘ third-season finale Sunday, but it was nothing as shocking as last week’s murders of Stark family members.

Perhaps producers were just letting viewers catch their breath.

The HBO fantasy drama closed its season with revenge, a reunion and promises of cataclysmic battles to come. (Beware of episode spoilers below.)

In the episode, the Lannisters learned their plans to slay King of the North Robb Stark and his forces had succeeded.

Fans are still talking about the chilling events of last week’s gory episode, The Rains of Castamere, in which the Stark clan, one of the nobler families of Thrones‘ ignoble world, was decimated at The Red Wedding.

Robb Stark, his pregnant wife, Talisa Maegyr, and his mother, Catelyn Stark, were ambushed and killed by representatives of the rival Lannister clan at a wedding uniting House Tully and House Frey. Robb’s armed forces were slaughtered, too.

The violence was graphic in the scene, which is based on events in A Storm of Swords, the third novel in George R. R. Martin’s book series, A Song of Ice and Fire. Talisa was stabbed repeatedly in the belly, while Catelyn had her throat cut.

It showed once again that no character, no matter how seemingly important, is safe in Thrones. Many viewers felt similar surprise when Robb’s father, Ned Stark, was killed in Season 1.

In Sunday’s episode, patriarch Tywin Lannister took cold satisfaction when he learned of the Stark deaths: “Let them remember what happens when they march on the south.”

Arya Stark, one of the family’s surviving children, stabbed one of the soldiers who had desecrated her brother Robb’s body, with her sympathetic captor, Sandor “The Hound” Clegane, slaying the soldier’s comrades.

Jaime Lannister made it back to King’s Landing, where he reunited with his sister, Cersei .

And, viewers learned that Theon Greyjoy’s sadistic torturer was Ramsay Snow, the son of Roose Bolton.

Other characters in Thrones‘ massive cast moved like chess pieces throughout the kingdom of Westeros and beyond.

Arya’s brother Bran continued his journey north, hoping to get past the Wall and face the terrors beyond. His half-brother, Jon Snow, was back with the Night’s Watch after surviving three arrows shot by his pained wildling lover, Ygritte. And Daenerys Targaryen exulted after freeing the slaves of Yunkai, who called her “Mhysa,” which means mother.

More battles will come. As the increasingly wise Tyrion Lannister said, “Every time we deal with an enemy, we create two more.” (The often inebriated Tyrion, played by Peter Dinklage, also got in a humorous line: “It’s not easy being drunk all the time. Everyone would do it if it were easy.”)

However, there may be something more terrifying in the offing than kings and their armies: the White Walkers north of the Wall and their army of the dead. As Davos Seaworth warned would-be king Stannis Baratheon: “It’s coming for all of us.”

As Thrones ends its season, the show’s growing pop-culture pull is evident in its ratings. For Season 3, the show’s gross audience – which measures viewership across multiple platforms – is 13.6 million viewers, making it HBO’s second-most-popular series after The Sopranos. It is up 17% over Season 2 and 46% over Season 1.

For the initial Sunday broadcast, Thrones is averaging 4.9 million viewers, with a high of 5.5 million on May 5. It’s up 29% over last season and is nearly doubling Season 1′s 2.5 million average.

The events of The Red Wedding episode, as many fans are calling it, caused a stir with over 700,000 social-media mentions, far ahead of any previous HBO episode, according to Mashwork social-media analysis. Social volume was up 44% from the season premiere, which is typically the busiest episode of a season.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Patients — and fans — can rest easy. Nurse Jackie isn’t going anywhere.

Showtime today picked up the Edie Falco comedy for a sixth season that will start in 2014. Falco plays Jackie Peyton, a brilliant emergency-room nurse dealing with some serious personal flaws.

“Under the new leadership of (executive producer) Clyde Phillips, and with an amazing cast led by Edie Falco, this show is as sharp and compelling and entertaining as ever,” Showtime entertainment president David Nevins said in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Jackie, which runs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET/PT, will have its fifth-season finale on June 16. That’s also the night The Borgias will end its run (10 p.m. ET/PT), having been canceled after three seasons.

Last Sunday’s initial broadcast of Jackie drew 784,000 viewers. The show is averaging 3.1 million viewers per week across multiple platforms, putting it 10% ahead of Season 4 in the comparable time frame, according to the network.

Jackie also stars Merritt Wever, Paul Schulze, Dominic Fumusa, Anna Deavere Smith and Peter Facinelli.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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Country star and former American Idol finalist Kellie Pickler, 26, was the belle of the disco ball Tuesday night on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars, scoring 10s for her final jive with pro partner Derek Hough and taking the mirrored trophy over NFL great Jacoby Jones and Disney star Zendaya.

“I’m overwhelmed with joy. I’m kinda speechless for the first time,” Pickler said after the show. “Usually, I’m spitting out words left and right. Now I don’t know what to say.”

As the final announcement between Pickler and Zendaya neared, she said, “I was just standing there and there was just two of us yet. I was kind of playing the whole journey through my mind. I was visualizing every dance. We made so many memories out here on the dance floor and in the studio.”

Fox’s Idol, which had its finale Thursday, and DWTS are shot on adjacent soundstages. Pickler, who was eliminated halfway through the final 12 on Season 5 of Idol, said that she and Hough went over to visit two nights ago, and “they’d torn down the whole idol stage, so it was just one big empty studio. I walked in the middle of the room, and I looked over at Derek, and he was like, ‘Babe, this is where it all started.’ I looked at him, and I was like, how can I hug this room and say ‘thank you’?”

Hough called Pickler “amazing. We never talked about winning. My mentality was doing good work and doing good dances, and trying to push her to her limit and bring out her full potential. I feel like she reached this amazing pinnacle last night with the freestyle.”

Before the viewer vote was tabulated and the final dances danced, the top of the leader board was as tight as it could be, with Zendaya just one point ahead of Pickler, 65-64, going into Tuesday.. Both scored two perfect dances Monday, Zendaya and partner Val Chmerkovskiy for their samba and freestyle performances, and Pickler and Hough for their quickstep and freestyle. Zendaya got the extra point by finishing ahead of Pickler in the cha-cha relay.

Youth was served in Season 16, with two finalists, Jones and Pickler — in their 20s, and the other two — gymnast Aly Raisman, who was eliminated earlier Tuesday evening with USA TODAY blogger Mark Ballas, and Zendaya — in their teens. At 16, Zendaya was the youngest performer ever in the competition.

In their final salsa, Jones apparently missed a running jump over partner Karina Smirnoff, and wound up with her head caught between his legs. They then did a retake, to rolling laughter from the judges, the audience and the competitors themselves.

Smirnoff explained after the show that the stage equipment got in the way. “The camera was coming toward us where we were supposed to end (the salsa). So we tried to move to one side and the camera followed that way. It was a cat and mouse situation.”

For the season, Dancing is averaging 14.3 million viewers and is down 17% in viewers and 23% among young adults (18-to-49) from last spring’s cycle. However, it is up 1% in viewers and flat in young adults compared to the fall’s all-star edition, which some thought was missing the appeal of dancing newcomers.

In the fall, ABC announced last week, the network will eliminate the lower-rated results show, consolidating performances and results into one night.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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FX is losing some Oscar cachet.

Ang Lee, who won the Academy Award this year for directing Life of Pi, has decided not to go ahead with plans to direct the FX pilot Tyrant. The piIot would have been his TV directorial debut and first directing project since Pi.

“It is one of the most brilliant ideas for a series that I’ve seen and one about which I was very excited,” Lee said in a statement. “However, after spending over four years making and promoting Life of Pi, I have recently realized that I need some rest. Because I cannot give 100% to this exciting project at this time, I cannot allow myself to do anything that may affect the potential for this exciting new series.”

In Tyrant, an unassuming American family is drawn into the affairs of a turbulent Middle Eastern nation.

Even without Lee, Tyrant has some big names behind the scenes. Executive producers include Howard Gordon and Gideon Raff of the Emmy-winning Homeland on Showtime. Raff also is Tyrant‘s creator.

Production isn’t scheduled until late summer or early fall. His withdrawal was first reported by Deadline.com.

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

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CBS pulled Monday night’s season finale of Mike & Molly, which contained a tornado plot, after a devastating tornado struck Oklahoma.

A mile-wide tornado caused widespread damage in Oklahoma City and its suburbs Monday afternoon.

“Due to the tragic events this afternoon in Oklahoma, we are pre-empting tonight’s season finale of Mike & Molly, which has a related storyline,” the network said Monday in a statement. “A repeat broadcast of Mike & Molly will run in the time period. The season finale will be broadcast at an appropriate date.”

The pre-empted episode of the third-season romantic comedy, which is set in Chicago, is called “Windy City.”

The episode description states: “Mike and Carl get stuck working at the Renaissance Faire after their boss, Patrick, gets dumped by Mike’s mother. Later, as a tornado descends on Chicago, Mike and Molly each confess important news to each other.”

Copyright © 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.