“SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE” TOPS SATURDAY RATINGS

Primetime players were not ready for Saturday Night Live this weekend. The show, featuring Tina Fey as host — and as Sarah Palin — and teenage sensation Justin Bieber as the musical guest, drew a bigger audience than any show that aired in primetime on that night — 9.2 million viewers, according to preliminary Nielsen figures. By contrast, the highest-rated show in primetime was Fox’s coverage of NASCAR’s Subway Fresh Fit 600, which averaged 5.8 million viewers. (The usual Saturday-night winner, CBS’s 48 Hours Mystery was a close second with 5.7 million viewers, but those early rankings for second and third place were so close that they could be reversed when final figures are released later today.) Fey’s return to the late-night show in the role of the former Alaska governor was her first since 2008 when Palin was running as the vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket. Several of the sketches addressed Palin’s new role as a TV personality. In one sketch Fey envisaged Palin hosting Tea Party Wheel of Fortune, revealing the puzzle’s answer as “Obamar is a terrist.” In another sketch, she reedited interviews with TV interviewers to make it appear that it was they, not she, who “were woefully unprepared.” Another sketch was titled, “Are You Smarter than a Half-Term Governor?”