Saturday Night Live UK has lost the best part of 100,000 viewers since its premiere.
The third episode in the series, hosted by Riz Ahmed, was watched by 130,100 viewers at 10PM on Sky, according to official overnight BARB figures supplied by overnights.tv.
The audience, which delivered a 1.8% viewing share, was down 36% on last week’s rating of 205,000 and 42% on the series debut, which was hosted by Tina Fey and was watched by 226,000 viewers.
SNL UK remains above what an average Sky show gets in the late Saturday slot. It also continues to beat the U.S version of the sketch series, which is shown on Sky Comedy.
Saturday’s episode featured a cold open of Keir Starmer and friends, including Olivia Colman and Peppa Pig, as well as a send-up of The Traitors, which mocked the show’s perceived unconscious racial bias.
It was always likely that SNL would lose viewers after the initial flurry of interest in the series, but ratings could fluctuate depending on the show’s host.
Even Ahmed himself suggested in his opening monologue that he may be unfamiliar to some viewers. “I’m an actor, I’m a writer, I’m a producer, and I’m a rapper. So, for those of you who don’t know who I am, clearly, neither do I,” the Four Lions star joked.
Sky won’t be judging SNL on its overnight ratings. The Comcast-owned company will take a broader view of the show’s performance, with the vitality of individual sketches likely to be important.
Last week’s Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor cold open has been viewed more than 2M times on YouTube, making it the most-watched sketch to date on the Google-owned platform.
Sky has never put huge stock in overnight ratings. Even before the rise of streaming, the broadcaster favored metrics that included repeat broadcasts and catch-up viewing. It means that the live audience for Saturday Night Live will just be one signal of the show’s success.
