‘Saturday Night Live’ premiere with Miley Cyrus celebrates solid ratings

We figured that “Saturday Night Live” would get off to at least a decent start in the ratings. Why wouldn’t it? Consider for a minute here that this is one of the biggest live shows out there, and with it being off the air for as long of a time as it was, there was going to be a natural curiosity in order to learn how the writers were going to navigate through telling some of the biggest stories of the summer.

In between covering these stories and having host Miley Cyrus aboard, the season premiere of “SNL” (read our full review over at the link here) drew in total a 2.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic. This ties the show’s highest-rated episode in this measure since we had the one hosted by J.K. Simmons on the air earlier this year. It also is the best overall household rating for the show since the Blake Shelton show.

Overall, “SNL” has been in a little bit of a ratings rut ever since the 40th Anniversary Special. It has never been in any danger of being canceled or anything, but the sentiment remains that it could be faring better than it is. What’s the divide? Part of it has to deal with a cast that is still trying to break more into the mainstream; maybe Taran Killam, Cecily Strong, and Kate McKinnon are the few players who are actually ready for primetime; Leslie Jones and Pete Davidson are rising stars, and they may be there in due time.

Also, the show has to find ways to continue to encourage people to watch live. There are so many ways to spend a Saturday night live, so making something so good that people want to sit through commercials and musical performances (if they don’t love the guest) is more of a challenge.

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