‘Saturday Night Live’ ratings: Blake Shelton’s presence leads to ratings rise

Going into this weekend’s new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” we figured that Blake Shelton would be a very good host from a commercial standpoint. This is a guy who has a ton of fans within the country music community, and many of them are probably not frequent “SNL” viewers. Meanwhile, there are also those who may not love Blake’s music, but at least love him on “The Voice.”

This weekend’s numbers are already in, and this episode drew a 2.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic. While that may not necessarily be an out-of-the-ballpark figure for the show, it is very strong and an improvement from last week’s show hosted by Kevin Hart. Its household rating of 4.7 was also the second-highest of the entire season, behind only the one hosted by Chris Rock. (The big draw with that show seemed to be getting Prince as a musical guest.)

As a whole, we would say that this episode actually did a much better job of representing what this show can do than even the one hosted by Rock did. You can see some of the videos here, and they include a great spoof on the New England Patriots and “deflategate,” and also a “Bachelor” parody, some Blake performances, and a “Weekend Update” bit by Pete Davidson that had some people out there howling in delight.

We feel like these numbers are especially important, given that we do not see the show hosted by J.K. Simmons next weekend being anywhere near as successful. The man may be an Oscar favorite due to his work in “Whiplash,” but it’s hard to really imagine mainstream viewers knowing him well enough to be excited.

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