Tuesday, June 30, 2026

“SNL” Wraps Fall with Season High Ratings Featuring Ariana Grande, Cher, and Bowen Yang’s Long Goodbye: Up 145K Viewers

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I told you!

“SNL” went out on a high this week.

The show wrapped its fall season up 145,000 viewers from the week before.

The episode featured Ariana Grande, Cher, and the exit of Bowen Yang.

Total viewers were 540,000. The prior week had been just 3.95 million.

Cher was key to the success even though she lips synched her first song. Fans didn’t care. They’ve been downloading “Play a Christmas Song” ever since then, and it’s a hit on iTunes.

“SNL” struggles with hosts and musical guests always. Also, as a friend from TV points out, their numbers coincide with the weather. If it’s cold out, people stay in.

That should mean when “SNL” returns January 17th, Finn Wolfhard from “Stranger Things” and rapper-actor A$AP Rocky should be a big deal. Special guests could come from “ST” and maybe we’ll see Rihanna, Rocky’s wife or whatever, join in.

As for Bowen Yang, he’ll be missed as much as Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, and Michael Longfellow. No one likes change.

Now if someone could just convince not to marry her boytoy, or to make him an ironclad pre-nup, that would be a Christmas miracle!

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Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz411. He wrote the FOX411 column on FoxNews.com from 1999 to 2009, where he covered Michael Jackson, and previously wrote the "Intelligencer" column at New York magazine in the mid-1990s, where he covered the O.J. Simpson trial. He also edited Fame magazine. His bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, Vogue, Details, and the Miami Herald. He is a voting member of the Critics Choice Awards (Film and Television branches), and his movie reviews are tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. With D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, he co-produced the 2002 documentary "Only the Strong Survive," which screened at Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival.

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