'Saturday Night Live' scores its highest premiere rating since 2008

The presidential election campaign and Alex Baldwin's impersonation of Donald Trump gave the season premiere of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" a big ratings lift. Saturday's 42nd season kickoff averaged a 5.8 rating in the 64 overnight markets measured by Nielsen. The figure is 29% higher than the season premiere on Oct. 3, 2015. It was the highest overnight rating for an "SNL" season opener since Sept. 13, 2008, when Tina Fey brought her spot-on impersonation of then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to the show. "SNL" pulled out the campaign stops this year with Baldwin as Trump and Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton in a parody of the first presidential debate last Monday (which averaged a record 84 million TV viewers).