SNL Stumbles as Bill Burr Delivers Season 50’s Smallest Audience So Far

First on LateNighter: One week after delivering its highest live-plus-same-day ratings in three and a half years, Saturday Night Live delivered its smallest live-plus-same-day audience of the season to date.

Saturday’s post-election episode, hosted by comedian Bill Burr and featuring first-time musical guest Mk. gee, drew 4,424,000 total viewers to NBC, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day data. That’s the show’s smallest live-plus-same-day audience since the May 18, 2024 episode (4,206,000 viewers), which was the SNL Season 49 finale hosted by Jake Gyllenhaal with musical guest Sabrina Carpenter.

This past week’s SNL shed 2,162,000 total viewers (or -33%) from the previous week’s new episode, which was hosted by SNL alum John Mulaney with musical guest Chappell Roan and a cameo from VP Kamala Harris. However, the episode did gain 538,000 total viewers (or +14%) over the year-ago SNL (Dec. 2, 2023), which was hosted by Emma Stone and featured musical guest Noah Kahan.

Among viewers in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic, the November 9, 2024 SNL averaged 967,000 viewers 18-49, per Nielsen live-plus-same-day data. That’s the second-smallest live-plus-same-day delivery of the season to-date, and down 701,000 viewers (or -42%) from the previous week’s new SNL. On the plus side, this past week’s episode gained 213,000 viewers in the demo (or +28%) over the aforementioned year-ago episode.

Note that all of the numbers above (for this week and past episodes for comparison) are same-day-plus-live measurements. Average episode viewership will increase once delayed-viewing Nielsen data arrives in the coming days.

Saturday Night Live returns this weekend (Nov. 16) for its seventh episode of the season, with singer Charli XCX pulling double duty as host and musical guest. This will be her first appearance as SNL host and third appearance as musical guest.

3 Comments

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  1. Steven Woolf says:

    Hopefully, Trump kills SNL soon.

    1. Caleb Tomlinson says:

      Hopefully, one guy can’t “kill” things he doesn’t like. That would make America a dictatorship, and no longer land of the free.

      Why do Republicans always talk about killing, crushing, and destroying, and never about building or creating? It’s very telling that you choose to speak this way.

      1. Mike says:

        You must be confused it was the DEMONrats that made not one but 2 assassination attempts at the candidate they don’t like…. the last 4 years has had no building of anything what so ever from the leftists in power.