For the second week in a row, college football is pushing back the start of Saturday Night Live—in at least some parts of the country.
NBC’s Saturday night matchup between Washington and No. 18 USC ran long tonight, moving SNL’s scheduled 11:30 p.m. ET start with host Dakota Johnson and musical guest Turnstile. The game, which kicked off at 7:30 p.m. ET from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, was the network’s Big Ten Saturday Night matchup.
NBC’s coverage ended at 11:09 p.m. ET, nine minutes later than scheduled.
LateNighter understands that Saturday Night Live will air live on Peacock and in a number of East Coast stations at its usual time. The show is set to air elsewhere on a short delay starting at about 11:41 p.m.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Just last week, NBC’s coverage of USC-Oregon ran 16 minutes long ahead of SNL’s Season 52 premiere.
In that case, Peacock and NBC’s East Coast owned-and-operated stations carried the Jalen Brunson-hosted episode live at its scheduled 11:30 p.m. ET start, with the O&O stations cutting their late local newscasts to just 14 minutes. Other NBC affiliates were given the option of airing SNL live or delaying the episode until after their regularly scheduled local news.
The result was an unusual split in which viewers in some parts of the country were watching SNL live while others were seeing the same episode on a delay.
Tonight’s episode marks Johnson’s third time hosting SNL. Her return to Studio 8H comes one day after the theatrical release of her new film Verity, the Colleen Hoover adaptation in which she stars alongside Anne Hathaway and Josh Hartnett.
Turnstile, meanwhile, is making its first appearance as SNL musical guest. The Grammy-winning hardcore band is in the midst of the North American leg of its NEVER ENOUGH Tour Pt. 2, which kicked off Sept. 9 in Milwaukee and continues through Oct. 18.
The back-to-back football conflicts have one other thing in common: USC. The Trojans’ games have now served as NBC’s primetime lead-in to SNL on each of the season’s first two Saturday nights.
