Global in Canada was a new network on the air about a year when, in 1975, it imported a little weekend show from NBC. Known back then as Saturday Night, it soon added Live and turned out to be one of the smartest buys the Canadian network has ever made.
Five decades later, Global celebrated the 50th anniversary of SNL by simulcasting NBC’s salutes to the series this past weekend. According to overnight estimates, the three-hour SNL50: The Anniversary Special drew close to 1.6 million viewers in Canada on Sunday night. The hour-long red carpet show at 7p.m. pulled in another 761,000.
Look for those totals to soar and perhaps double by the time Live+7 and digital views are added.
Global did not see much of a ratings jolt Saturday at 11:30 p.m. from their simulcast of NBC’s re-broadcast of the very first episode of the series, which featured George Carlin as host. In Canada, 513,000 overnight, estimated viewers were tallied for the Feb. 15 trip down memory lane.
In addition, Showcase, a Corus Entertainment-owned specialty channel, carried the Saturday Night Live Music special which was seen exclusively in the US on NBCUniversal’s streaming platform Peacock. Canadian data from Monday’s Showcase airing will be added to this post when available Wednesday.
In the US, according to preliminary data, SNL‘s live three hour anniversary salute drew 14.8 million viewers Sunday on NBC. That makes it the broadcast network’s largest non-sports viewing audience in five years and comperable to the 15.4 million who watched The Grammy Awards on CBS earlier in February.
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UPDATE: In addition, Saturday Night Live‘s 50th season generated an estimated $50 million in Peacock subscriber revenue in 2024, according to Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics data.
