Saturday Night Live Will Air Live Coast-To-Coast Next Season

Saturday Night Live will indeed be live across the country once again next season. Variety reports that the show will continue the experiment that began with the last four episodes of the show's highly successful 42nd season, airing at 11:30 p.m. Eastern, 10:30 p.m. Central, 9:30 p.m. Mountain, and 8:30 p.m. Pacific. 

The final four episodes of SNL's 42nd season were the first in the show's long history to air live coast-to-coast, with the change beginning with Jimmy Fallon's May 14th episode and continuing through the May 20th finale, hosted by Dwayne Johnson. Among those live coast-to-coast episodes, Melissa McCarthy's fifth outing as host brought the show its highest May ratings in seven years with 10.337 million viewers, while Johnson's finale was the most watched season capper since Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga's episode in 2011.

The season as a whole brought in an average of 11 million viewers per episode, the highest since the 1993 to 1994 season, during the heyday of Adam Sandler, David Spade, and Dana Carvey. The show also received its most Emmy nominations ever, tying with Westworld for the most nods, and took home some huge awards, including Outstanding Variety Sketch Series and acting awards for frequent guest Alec Baldwin, cast memberKate McKinnon, and hosts McCarthy and Dave Chappelle.

SNL creator Lorne Michaels previously said that he tried out the live broadcasts because of the show's renewed chatter on social media. "One [reason] was [NBC chairman] Bob Greenblatt wanted it, and the other was that social media was so [focused] on the show that if you were following Twitter you were hearing about it before you could see it," he said.

SNL returns for season 43 with Ryan Gosling as the host and Jay-Z as the musical guest on Sept. 30. For now, read up on the untold truth of the show.