In late-night metered-market households Saturday night:
Saturday Night Live, hosted by Jennifer Lopez, dominated its time period with a 6.3/15 in metered-market households. SNL is the #1 non-sports program of the night in the metered markets, topping all primetime telecasts on all the major networks excluding NBC's coverage of the Olympics.
It's the #2 SNL rating of the season, behind only the 7.7/19 on January 9 with a telecast hosted by Charles Barkley and featuring musical guest Alicia Keys. In the 25 markets with Local People Meters, SNL averaged a 3.6 rating in adults 18-49, also #2 for the season behind the 5.0 for January 9.
Last night's SNL was also 37% above its season average (4.6 in metered-market households). Note that the season average includes "live only" figures prior to January 7.
Thats werid considering the Olympics was the lead in!!!
Though I love Sir Charles, I’m pretty sure the January 9 ratings were more about the Eagles/Cowboys wild card game that aired on NBC that night than Sir Charles.
There’s still definitely reasonable room for debate for anyone who might prefer Ms. Lopez to Mr. Barkley in a “Who ya got” discussion. But there’s no room for debating that an NFL football game is a better lead-in for SNL than the Olympics. Though sadly for NBC, neither happen very often and both are better lead-ins than its typical Saturday night fare.
kyle, Charles Barkley’s SNL lead in was the NFC playoff game with the Cowboys.
For future reference: NFL playoffs > Olympics.
Edit: Also for future reference: Robert’s typing speed > Bill’s typing speed.
It will be interesting to see if Betty Whites’ rumored appearance can top them both. I actually watched most of the skits last night so I guess it was ok.
Hopefully that means HIMYM will get a boost from her.
MIke the Canadian, since NBC has nothing scheduled for Saturday primetime for the rest of the season that will be even remotely close to the Olympics or an NFL playoff game, Betty has no chance of competing.
Before this year, I don’t think Lorne was too fond of sports lead-ins, due to an incident nine(!) years ago where the ill-fated XFL was a lead-in to an SNL episode with J. Lo coincidentally hosting at the top of her fame. SNL started at 12:20 leading to much lower ratings. Lorne almost canceled the taping that night when he saw how late they would be starting, but instead did live to tape, not telling the audience, cast, or Lopez.
http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2001-02-13#tv1
Also interesting to note in that IMDb article that in ’01, SNL was getting 7.4 ratings…for a rerun. The days of Will Ferrell and little DVRs are long gone.
And funny that the SNL staff delivered two of the worst batch of sketches this seasons on big nights, with stronger quality sketch nights having weaker lead-ins. They blow their chances when they are delivered big audiences from NFL/Olympics.
Last night actually had some funny skits. I usually only enjoy about 2 sketches a show, but there were a handful that I enjoyed. I think the most hilarious was the one hidden at the tail end of the broadcast with the Smash Mouth monster in the closet.
The lead in was the Olympics!
AtCat: The lead in was the skating “all-stars” which was just them showboating. It wasn’t for any medals, it was just an exhibition.
Last nights show was the worst I have ever seen. There were no skits that even had me smiling. They were all dumb and I cannot believe the writers thinks anything was funny last night. If it continues this way I think they should put a movie on. The dead time during the skit while we were waiting for the laptop to download was the stupidest thing I have seen. The writers should be replaced and shot. If Mr Micheal’s thinks this is funny he should be shot also.
Well Seth Meyers sucks, and so does Weekend update with him.
Thought SNL was funny. Maybe you had to get the curling jokes because there were a lot of them. SNL and their skits are hit and miss but that is the nature of the show. It has always been that way.
Apparently our local station wasn’t sure what was on after their news. They missed two commercial breaks and joined SNL in progress. I think they were expecting Olympics.
I couldn’t remember whether SNL was on or not so I watched most of the news on another channel I regularly watch and switched to find out. Didn’t watch Olympics once last night on NBC, Did watch the curling final because it is so oddly bizarrely fascinating as well as incomprehensible which, I am guessing, was the reason for the SNL skits.
People always have griped about Weekend Update, even from the supposed golden days.
Why are people watching shows that they hate? It is not as if NBC is going to put something else on Saturday after the news and it must make them money.
Do not estimate the ratings juggernaut that is Betty White!
@lynn: I like weekend update more if it was more than one person. I had no problem with seth and amy…but just seth makes W.U. all about him instead of what I enjoyed most about it was the give and take between the anchors.
ummmm why?
i watched the last hour and it sucked…i liked the final skit with the spanish sells lady. i just find Tina Tina funny.
Both of the broadcasts can thank the Eagles/Cowboys and the Olympics for that huge boost. I wanted to see Mary Carillo though.
Both of the broadcasts can thank the Eagles/Cowboys and the Olympics for that huge boost. I wanted to see Mary Carillo though.
I’m somewhat surprised that SNL got such huge ratings last night. I don’t believe this episode was originally scheduled to air last night. I remember when SNL last aired prior to the Olympics, the next new upcoming episode they announced during one of the breaks was for March 6th. Apparently NBC didn’t have any tape delayed events to air in late night last night (since all of the events save for the gold medal hockey game and the 50 KM cross country race had taken place already), so Dick Ebersol must have put in a request to his buddy Lorne Michaels to assemble a new SNL episode as quickly as possible.
Having said that, apart from the We Are The World skit and the flag commercial skit, last night’s episode was pretty lame. Not necessarily the worst episode, but a let down just the same.