‘Live’ Gives Stern Saturday-Night Shock

NBC can apparently breathe easy about “Saturday Night Live” ratings being diminished by facing “The Howard Stern Radio Show,” based on preliminary results for the former’s season premiere Saturday.

Stern has frequently criticized “Saturday Night” and boasted that his latest foray into television would steal viewers away. At least the first round, however, went decisively to NBC, which even beat Stern by large margins in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, where the controversial personality’s radio show is extremely popular.

Overall, NBC’s long-running late-night series drew nearly 8% of homes in major cities measured by Nielsen Media Research, almost three times the rating for Stern’s program, which airs mostly on CBS stations and isn’t as widely available.

Hosted by “There’s Something About Mary” star Cameron Diaz, “Saturday Night” exhibited no ill effects from the new competition; in fact, its rating was higher than the show’s first episode last year.

By contrast, Stern’s 2.7 rating reflects a drop of more than 40% versus his program’s premiere five weeks ago opposite “SNL” reruns. Stern also finished behind Fox’s “Mad TV.”

Preliminary results from Saturday also revealed a virtual dead heat in a key matchup between two new prime-time dramas, CBS’ “Martial Law” and ABC’s “Fantasy Island,” which duked it out at 9 p.m.

Tune-in numbers for the CBS action show, featuring martial arts star Sammo Hung, were slightly higher, but the series fell a bit off its lead-in audience from “Early Edition.” The “Fantasy Island” revival actually recruited viewers to the time period, emerging as ABC’s top-rated program of the night.