RATINGS: SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE Hits an Eleven Year High

Eddie Murphy's historic return to "Saturday Night Live" is generating hit viewership across all platforms.

In "live plus seven day" results from Nielsen Media Research measuring linear viewership, the Dec. 21 "SNL" telecast has grown to a 4.37 rating in adults 18-49 and 16.293 million viewers overall. It's the show's biggest L+7 total viewership in more than 11 years, since the Oct. 18, 2008 telecast, when Sarah Palin appeared on the show opposite Tina Fey's impression (16.837 million viewers in L+7 with host Josh Brolin and musical guest Adele).

The Dec. 21 telecast, hosted by Eddie Murphy and featuring musical guest Lizzo, generated a time-shifting increase of +6.308 million viewers going from "live plus same day" Nielsens to L+7, the show's biggest L+7 lift ever and biggest for any broadcast television program since the Nov. 5, 2018 episode of NBC's "Manifest" grew in L+7 by +6.971 million viewers.

In adults 18-49 rating it was the show's top L+7 result in almost three years (since a 4.88 with host Alec Baldwin and musical guest Ed Sheeran on Feb. 11, 2017). The lift of +1.87 rating points going from L+SD to L+7 stands as the biggest on any network since the Nov. 20, 2018 telecast of "This Is Us" grew in L+7 by +2.02.

Compared to SNL's season-to-date L+7 averages, the Dec. 21 edition was up +112% in 18-49 18-49 rating (4.37 vs. 2.06) and +7.8 million persons or +91% in total viewers (16.293 million vs. 8.540 million).

Across linear viewing and long- and short-form digital views (currently including six days of Youtube data), viewers have consumed at least 1.2 billion minutes of the Eddie Murphy installment of "Saturday Night Live."

Short-Form Digital: With six days of viewing available, clips from the show have accumulated 205.5 million minutes of viewing across YouTube, NBCD, and Hulu. It's the show's largest six-day short-form audience across these platforms in more than a year, since the Season 44 premiere.

Long-Form Digital: With seven days of viewing available, full episode digital viewing across Hulu and NBCD is up to 119.9 million minutes viewed, easily the strongest full-episode digital viewing through seven days for a regular late-night "SNL" on record (going back to the 2014-15 season).

YouTube Views: For the week of Dec. 22, "Saturday Night Live" collected 112 million views on YouTube, making this the best week for views in the show's Youtube channel history and first to clear 100 million views, topping the recent previous record-setting week of Nov. 24 (91 million views).

This made "SNL" the #1 most-viewed Youtube Entertainment program of the week of Dec. 22 across all dayparts and distributors, topping the nearest competitor by more than 35 million views (Source: ListenFirst Media Brand Rankings; LF // TV Universe // Episodic; ListenFirst Video Views [YouTube]; Brand Type: TV Shows; 12/22/19-12/29/19. Excludes Children's Programs).

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