The first Saturday Night Live episode of 2021 continued the show’s strong ratings run, leading all primetime and late night shows in both total viewers and adults 18-49. Lifetime’s Wendy Williams movie was also a solid draw Saturday, and 60 Minutes led a fairly quiet, rerun-heavy Sunday.
SNL, hosted by John Krasinski and with musical guest Machine Gun Kelly, delivered 6.69 million viewers and a 1.44 rating among adults 18-49. That’s up slightly from the last show of 2020 (6.53 million, 1.4) and in line with its same-day season average. It beat everything in primetime Saturday, including ABC’s first NBA Saturday Primetime telecast of the season (2.74 million viewers, 0.83 in 18-49).
Wendy Williams: The Movie topped the 18-49 rankings with a 0.44 rating and averaged 2.15 million total viewers — way above Lifetime’s usual Saturday numbers and third on cable for the day behind only Hallmark’s movie Snowkissed (2.34 million) and Watters World on Fox News (2.18 million).
Sunday was the original date for the Grammy Awards (since pushed to mid-March), and without the ceremony, CBS aired reruns from 8-11 p.m. NBC and Fox also took the night off. 60 Minutes led primetime with 9.36 million viewers and a 0.73 in adults 18-49.
With the lighter competition, ABC’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (0.58 in 18-49, 4.3 million viewers) and Card Sharks (0.48, 3.03 million) both improved. Batwoman (0.16, 708,000) grew its total audience a little while holding steady in the demo on The CW. Charmed (0.09, 417,000) was fairly steady.
Bookmark THR.com/Ratings for more ratings news and numbers.
