Seven episodes into its landmark 50th season, Saturday Night Live is the highest rated entertainment series across ad-supported broadcast and cable TV among viewers aged 18-49.
It’s a familiar spot for the show, which ended Season 49 with the same distinction, beating out TV’s highest-rated non-news and sports programs, including primetime heavy hitters like Survivor and Tracker. The show is also on track to mark its sixth season as TV’s highest rated comedy in the demo.
While ratings trends for traditional TV overall have been on a steady downward trajectory for some time now—especially in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demo—SNL’s numbers have actually grown.
According to Nielsen Live+7 data for this season’s first seven episodes, the show has earned an average 1.28 rating in the demo. That’s up 4.25% over last year’s season-long average of 1.13.
Among total viewers, SNL has drawn an average 7.3 million viewers over its first seven episodes this season.
The show’s highest rated episode so far this season was the John Mulaney-hosted pre-election episode on November 2nd, which drew 9.1 million total viewers per Nielsen Live+7 day data. That was the episode that featured a cameo by Kamala Harris and two musical performances from Chappell Roan.
These numbers do not include digital viewing on Peacock, NBC.com, YouTube, TikTok, and other social media sites, where at least one sketch—“Bridesmaid Speech” (aka the first Domingo sketch)—has been viewed over 150 million times since it first aired on October 12, per NBC.
Saturday Night Live is currently on a two-week Thanksgiving break. The show is set to return for the first of three new episodes on December 7th, with host Paul Mescal and musical guest Shaboozey.
