Saturday Night Live Is Most Watched Entertainment Telecast For Second Week In A Row

Now two episodes into its new season, Saturday Night Live continues to dominate the ratings and post record viewership for the comedy program. According to a press release, the most recent episode with host Bill Burr and musical guest Jack White averaged a 1.41 rating in “live plus same day” adult 18-49 rating and 6.897 viewers overall, according to Nielsen Media Research. These numbers have positioned the series as the week’s #1 most-watched entertainment telecast, beating out the #2 show, The Masked Singer, by a significant margin. The most recent edition of the series is also the #3 most-watched episode of SNL since the Fall 2018 premiere.

The October 10th episode is also up +7% in 18-49 (1.41 vs. 1.32) and up +11% in total viewers (6.897 million vs. 6.240 million) compared to the average of last season’s episodes. The only episodes of SNL that outrank it in total viewers was the premiere episode of this season (8.235 million viwers) and the December 21, 2019 episode guest hosted by Eddie Murphy (9.986 million).

On the digital side, this week’s episode of Saturday Night Live brought in 484,000 Total Interactions, making it the #1 most-social late-night broadcast airing of the week. The episode also accounted for eight of the ten most-viewed videos across all comedy programs on YouTube over the weekend. The #1 most-viewed video from the episode was the “VP Fly Debate Cold Open” with 7.3 million views. Furthermore the episode generated the #1 most-commented on post with the YouTube video Bill Burr’s monologue bringing in 7,000 comments

The viewership for the premiere episode of this season continues to rack up numbers as well with the Live +7 data indicating 11.855 million viewers, the largest premiere among total viewers since 2016’s episode with host Margot Robbie and musical guest The Weeknd. It’s also the #2 largest premiere going back 26 years to 1994 (12.201 million with host Steve Martin and musical guest Eric Clapton on Sept. 24,1994).

Saturday Night Live airs Saturday at 11:30 pm ET on NBC. Issa Rae hosts the October 17th episode with musical guest Justin Bieber. For the first time in a decade, the entire cast from Season 45 has opted to return for Season 46, including the likes of Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, and Kenan Thompson. In addition to the returning cast, Ego Nwodim was promoted to repertory player while Anderew Dismukes, Lauren Holt, and Punkie Johnson have joined as new cast members.