SNL Is Top-Rated TV Comedy for 5th Straight Year, Audience Grows 3%

Saturday Night Live Season 49 was the 2023-24 TV season’s top-rated comedy series, with an average demo rating of 1.13 — down just a few percentage points from the long-running NBC sketch series’ Season 48 average.

Not only did SNL top all TV comedies in the demo for a fifth straight season, its average audience across all platforms rose 3% year-over-year, with 7.2 million total weekly viewers.

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The most-watched outing of SNL Season 49 was hosted by Ryan Gosling, featured musical guest Chris Stapleton and drew 8.9 million viewers. That episode also led the season in “social video views” (with a total of 107.3 million), and its “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch was the most-viewed video of Season 49 (with 15.8 million views on YouTube).

TVLine readers gave the Gosling/Stapleton episode an average grade of “A.” Where does it rank among all of Season 49’s episodes graded by TVLine readers? Check back here on Saturday for our annual report!

What Were TV’s Most-Watched Shows?

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As TVLine reported earlier today, the 2023-24 TV season’s top-rated primetime comedy series was CBS’ Young Sheldon, which averaged a 0.75 demo rating (with Live+7 playback. It was followed by CBS’ Ghosts (0.74) and ABC’s Abbott Elementary (0.70).

Young Sheldon was also the most-watched primetime comedy, averaging 9.3 million total viewers. Ghosts placed second in that measure with 8.2 million viewers, distantly followed by CBS’ The Neighborhood (5.7 million).

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