• by Gaetano Pollice , November 3, 2008

Not everyone stays home on Saturday nights, least of all just to watch Saturday Night Live. But, as Integrated Media Measurement Inc. found out, no one has to worry about missing Tina Fey mimic vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's "fancy pageant walkin'" because they were at the bar instead.

In a survey of people who saw at least one of the first three Fey-as-Palin sketches, IMMI found that 33 percent watched the original TV broadcasts, while 67 percent caught up via DVR or online.

The report measures up with NBC.com's estimates of the number of streams of its Palin-skewering skits (five altogether, including Palin's own "Weekend Update" appearance). An SNL spokesman pegged their combined number, including embeddable video, at about 32 million streams. But SNL still had the last laugh when it comes to those Nielsen boxes: The Oct. 18 episode, featuring the real Palin, grabbed 15 million pairs of eyeballs, scoring SNL its biggest audience since the March 12, 1994 episode, hosted by tabloid favorite Nancy Kerrigan.