“Saturday Night Live” is still in the ratings doldrums despite pulling out the two top selling pop stars as musical guests this month.
On Saturday, the show scored just under 5 million viewers for Taylor Swift’s 10 minute song, plus her appearance in sketches. Show host Jonathan Majors was not a strong draw. With delayed viewing, the final numbers went up to 5.8 million.
That number was only incrementally higher than the week before with Ed Sheeran drawing a total 5.7 million with delayed viewing.
So what can they do? The show’s writing is very steady right now, and the pop stars are the biggest. The hosts are kind of meh, but that shouldn’t be holding down viewing.
The next pairing doesn’t bode well for ratings at all: Saweetie is the musical guest, and Simu Liu of the movie “Shang Chi” will host. How the bookers arrived at this pairing is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, no sign of Kate McKinnon’s return, and soon Cecily Strong- who’s been knocking it out of the park every week– will head to off off Broadway to try out her Lily Tomlin show. (I’m really looking forward to that.)
So far the real winner of the season is James Austin Johnson, whose impersonations– particularly Trump– are spot-on and eerily reminiscent of the great David Frye.
