Saturday Night Live hit a season high as it rang in the holidays.
NBC has revealed that the Ariana Grande-hosted episode, which featured Cher as musical guest, averaged 5.4M viewers, making it the most-watched episode of the show’s Season 51.
The previous high was the 4.6M that tuned in for the October 4 season premiere, which was hosted by Bad Bunny. The numbers were live-plus-same-day Nielsen data.
The episode was also the most-watched episode since November 2, 2024, which was hosted by John Mulaney, and the highest Christmas episode in five years.
In terms of digital reach, it was the second ranked episode on Peacock, behind the season premiere, and drew 503M social views across YouTube, Facebook, X, Instagram and TikTok, which the network says is “outpacing” last season’s Ariana Grande-hosted episode, which was the most viewed social episode of Season 50.
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It was a packed episode. It was Bowen Yang’s final show and the Las Culturistas host got a poignant send off with an emotional final sketch.
Aidy Bryant returned to help give Yang a send-off with a Weekend Update revival of their trend forecaster characters, the show paid tribute to Rob Reiner, who hosted the third ever episode and tragically died earlier this month, and Michael Che surprised his Weekend Update co-anchor Colin Jost with a one-sided joke swap featuring a gag about Jost’s wife Scarlett Johansson.
Saturday Night Live returns in the new year with Stranger Things star Finn Wolfhard hosting and A$AP Rocky as musical guest.