Saturday Night Live suffered some ratings declines with its first episode since the immediate aftermath of the presidential election. The NFL was also down year to year, although as usual nothing else on Sunday came close to its numbers.
The Dec. 5 episode of SNL, with host Jason Bateman and musical guest Morgan Wallen, drew 6.19 million viewers and a 1.2 rating among adults 18-49, both season lows. Even with that, however, the show is still running well ahead of its 2019-20 average; it’s currently up 17 percent in viewers and 21 percent in the 18-49 demographic over last season’s same-day average.
On Sunday, the NFL had the four most watched telecasts of the day with CBS’ late-afternoon game (19.23 million viewers), NBC’s primetime Sunday Night Football (17.07 million) and Fox’s (15.23 million) and CBS’ (14.57 million) afternoon games. The early CBS game improved on the comparable weekend a year ago, but the other three were down from 2019.
CBS’ special Holly Dolly Christmas, starring Dolly Parton, was the top entertainment show on Sunday in both adults 18-49 (0.7) and total viewers (6.42 million). The network’s 60 Minutes used its NFL lead-in to score 11.47 million viewers and a 1.7 in the 18-49 demo, slightly below its post-football average for the fall.
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