For the first time in memory, two programs — Tina Fey’s triumphal return to “Saturday Night Live” and Tiger Woods’ wobbly third round at The Masters — had bigger ratings than anything on primetime TV this weekend.
Fey, who hosted “SNL” for the first time in two years, drew an estimated 9.2 million viewers over the weekend.
Woods, who played well enough to stay in contention but failed to threaten seriously the leaders, and the Saturday afternoon Masters coverage was way up over last year — but still no match for the biggest Masters ever, 2001 and 1997, when Woods’ remarkable career was just getting started.
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No estimates of total viewers were immediately available. But the ratings — which actually measures TV homes, not people — were 66 percent higher than the best-rated shows in primetime, a NASCAR race on Fox, which drew an estimated 5.8 million viewers.
On rare occasion, a show outside primetime will beat the highest-rated shows during the peak viewing hours of 8 to 11 p.m. It happened earlier this year when basketball star Charles Barkley (and musical guest Alicia Keys) scored the biggest “SNL” audience of the season, 10.4 million.
But for two shows — one in the afternoon and another late at night — to dwarf everything in primetime is practically unheard of.