The Saturday Night Live hosting debut for stand-up comic Shane Gillis garnered a lot of attention from the media press, amongst his diehard fans and in various corners of the internet.
Critical response to his his actual performance as host was mixed (some positives, some negatives), as was the linear viewership trend for the episode.
The Feb. 24 episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Gillis, averaged 3.99 million total viewers and 999,000 P18-49 viewers, according to live-plus-same-day data from Nielsen. Those numbers will grow as delayed viewing data trickles in over the next week.
Out of the 12 SNL episodes that have aired this season to-date, Gillis’ episode comes in at No. 10 in total viewers — the smallest total audience since the Dec. 2, 2023 episode (hosted by Emma Stone), and down -13% from the previous live SNL (hosted by The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri).
While Gillis’ episode didn’t capture a significant total audience by SNL standards, it did perform quite well in the key P18-49 demo, something the powers-that-be were hoping for when they made the eyebrow-raising decision to book the fired former cast member as host.
The 999,000 P18-49 viewer average from this week’s episode represents the third-largest key demo audience of any SNL episode this season — largest since the Oct. 28, 2023 episode (hosted by fellow comic Nate Bargatze) and up +16% from the show’s most recent live episode.
“While Gillis’ episode didn’t capture a significant total audience by SNL standards, it did perform quite well in the key P18-49 demo, something the powers-that-be were hoping for when they made the eyebrow-raising decision to book the fired former cast member as host.”
So what? That number is eventually going to go back down soon as usual with that washed up piece of bleep, Lorne Michaels!