‘Saturday Night Live’ Returns To NBC With Promising Audience Growth For Season 49 Premiere

Katie Campione

17 October 2023 at 1:12 pm·1-min read

Saturday Night Live was welcomed back to the airwaves with open arms.

The Season 49 premiere managed 4.8M viewers on NBC, according to Nielsen data. That marks a 19% audience increase versus the Season 48 premiere.

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The episode, hosted by Pete Davidson with musical guest Ice Spice, also scored a 0.96 rating among the 18-49 entertainment demographic, which is up 31% over last year to become the best demo performance since the season premiere in 2020.

On Peacock, the Season 49 premiere claims the third-highest one-day viewing on Peacock for SNL, behind Dave Chappelle/Black Star and Pedro Pascal/Coldplay.

The return of SNL also made some noise on social media, generating 1.2M social interactions, which is the most for an episode of the comedy sketch show since Nov. 13, 2021, when Jonathan Majors hosted with Taylor Swift as musical guest.

Maybe Taylor Swift’s surprise appearance on Saturday, along with her new beau Travis Kelce, had something to do with it.

SNL also returned to NBC amid a lull in live-action, scripted comedy due to the 148-day writers strike, which also prompted an early end to Season 48, as well as the ongoing actors strike (which is about to reach 100 days). This almost certainly had some effect on the episode’s performance.

Saturday Night Live returns this weekend with Bad Bunny pulling double duty as host and musical guest.

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