We knew that Ariana Grande hosting Saturday Night Live was a big deal. Mixed with Cher coming on as the musical guest, people were going to tune into the last episode of 2025. What we possibly didn’t expect was such a high in the linear ratings.
Now, it likely wasn’t the fact that Grande was hosting or Cher was the musical guest — making her first official appearance as a musical guest since 1987. The fact that it came out just before the episode that Bowen Yang would be leaving SNL made sure people were tuning in to see the performances.
SNL’s highest-rated Christmas episode in five years
The Saturday, Dec. 20 episode marks the highest-rated Christmas episode in five years, according to Late Nighter. The linear ratings show that 5.4 million viewers tuned in for the episode, which was a 37% increase from the previous week with Josh O’Connor as the host. The demo, which is arguably the more important of the two, came in at 1.2 million, with a 72% increase from the previous week!
It is now the highest-rated episode of all of SNL season 51. The premiere with Bad Bunny and Doja Cat was the highest-rated up to this point.
When it comes to Christmas episodes, Ariana Grande and Cher was up by 9% in the viewers and 28% in the demo compared to the Dec. 21, 2024 episode with Martin Short and Hozier. Late Nighter didn’t include the viewership from Christmas 2020, but I would have loved to see the numbers compared. After all, linear ratings have been seeing a downward fall for the majority of shows in recent years due to streaming access, and SNL is no stranger to that.
Live+3 linear ratings are still to come for Saturday Night Live
We don’t have all the data just yet, as the current ratings are just from the night of the episode. Networks take the Live+3 numbers into account when it comes to renewals — not that we’re worried about Saturday Night Live — and those numbers do bring in some big upticks. While Josh O’Connor and Lily Allen’s episode was low in the initial numbers, it topped out at 5.12 million total viewers.
The Live+Same Day ratings don’t take into account any Peacock or YouTube views. We all know that they are popular, whether people are watching for the first time because they couldn’t stay up late, or because they want to rewatch a particular skit.
What is likely, though, is that Yang’s announcement that he was leaving SNL just before the episode led to many people tuning in live rather than waiting to watch delayed. People want to watch a swan song live, and Yang gave a brilliant performance.
Saturday Night Live will return with new episodes on Saturday, Jan. 17 at 11:30 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.