SNL50 reunites NBC with five-year ratings high

14.8 million people tuned in Sunday night to watch sketch comedy’s Who's Who.

By Emma Keates | February 18, 2025 | 9:51am

Screenshot: Saturday Night Live/YouTube

TV News Saturday Night Live

SNL50 reunites NBC with five-year ratings high

Julia Louis-Dreyfus can tell her blind service dog that he’s famous. 14.8 million people tuned in to watch Saturday Night Live stars old and new, assorted Very Famous people, and two more Domingo brothers toast the legendary sketch show’s 50th anniversary on Sunday night. That makes it NBC’s most-watched primetime telecast in five years—since 2020’s Golden Globes, per TVLine. The special also clocks in as the fourth most-watched event simulcast on Peacock behind three Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parades, which sounds like the seed of a great SNL sketch in itself. Someone get Kristen Wiig on that one.

We also can’t forget about the “Homecoming” concert special Friday night, which gave us some really great moments like Robyn performing “Dancing On My Own” with David Byrne, Lady Gaga singing “Dick In A Box” with Andy Samberg and a bunch of other surprise guests, and this gif of Pedro Pascal dancing. NBC hasn’t reported any specific viewership numbers as of this writing, but TVLine reports that it delivered “nearly twice” the average reach of a standard SNL season 50 episode over a three-day period. Steven Spielberg might be as proud of that as he was of the camera setup during Bad Bunny’s performance.