Saturday Night Live closed out its 49th season this past Saturday with Road House star Jake Gyllenhaal taking on host duties for the third time, and Sabrina Carpenter making her SNL musical guest debut.
While the episode itself earned generally positive reviews, live-plus-same-day viewership for the Gyllenhaal-fronted SNL season finale was below average. The sketch show hauled in an average of 4,205,000 total viewers and 869,000 P18-49 viewers on May 18, 2024, per Nielsen. That’s – 1% in total viewers and -3% among P18-49 versus live-plus-same-day averages for the most-recent episode — led by Maya Rudolph on May 11. The May 18, 2024 SNL delivered the show’s smallest total live-plus-same-day audience since the March 30, 2024 episode (hosted by Ramy Youssef).
Out of the 20 SNL episodes that aired in the 2023-’24 season, the Gyllenhaal-led show is No. 13 in live-plus-same-day viewing.
Delayed viewing data won’t arrive for several days, and it’s possible the May 18 episode will shoot up the ranks.
Speaking of delayed viewing data, LateNighter will post SNL’s Season 49 live-plus-seven-day ratings when the data arrives early next month. After that, we’ll get a better sense of how the show fared relative to recent SNL seasons.
