Dogecoin plunges as Elon Musk calls it ‘a hustle’ on SNL

Dogecoin plunges as Elon Musk calls it ‘a hustle’ on SNL. Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Canal shares the details.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: There you go. The words, "it's a hustle," from Elon Musk because he was hosting SNL there, sent Dogecoin's price plummeting in what we saw play out there. A big run-up to hit new all-time highs ahead of that appearance, north of $0.70 a coin, now trading around 50. And for more on Elon Musk's abilities to host SNL, I want to bring on Yahoo Finance's Alexandra Canal here in this week's Fame & Fortune. And Allie, I mean, when we looked at it, price moves in doge aside, I thought Elon Musk did a great job out there.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Yeah, you're one of many people, Zack. I think the general consensus here is everyone was pleasantly surprised. I know Elon Musk was a very surprising choice. He was a controversial option. In fact, a lot of SNL cast members were initially pretty upset with this decision, tweeting cryptic messages that were later deleted. And if you look at Musk as a figure, he says things that aren't necessarily kosher. He had at one time called the COVID-19 pandemic, which actually was referenced in one of the skits. There's also been reports about Tesla and the treatment of those employees.

He's obviously one of the richest people in the world. He has $166 billion to his name, according to Forbes. And this is something that SNL, they haven't really done. They normally don't have business people host the show. It's normally exclusively entertainers or performers. So this was a little bit different than what they were used to.

But it seems like this is something that has certainly paid off. If you take a look at the ratings, according to early TV data from Nielsen, it earned a 4.8 rating, which is about 33% higher than the last SNL original episode, which aired April 10th and saw "A Promising Young Woman" star Carey Mulligan as the host. That makes the Elon Musk SNL episode the third most watched episode this season, right behind Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock.

So it seems like people were really curious to tune in. They were curious to see what Elon Musk has to say. Dogecoin was certainly not the only headline here. He also revealed in his opening monologue that he has Asperger's syndrome. He really poked fun at all of his antics over the past few years, including smoking weed on Joe Rogan's podcast. So I think, by and large, people were pleasantly surprised by this. And it certainly shows in the ratings.

AKIKO FUJITA: Allie, one of the things that struck me is the Twitter discussion leading up to SNL, which is people asking, how do I even watch this? Because people don't have cable. They're not necessarily watching SNL live every Saturday. I mean, it seems like a real opportunity for SNL to bring in a new audience as well. And I wonder if you think what they did on Saturday as in streaming it to an international audience, that's something that you think maybe they'll try to play around with a bit more, given the reach that this episode had, although you could argue it was specifically because of Elon Musk.

ALEXANDRA CANAL: Absolutely, they did decide to live stream this episode on YouTube to over 100 different countries. And I definitely think that that's something that they can do more of. I think at the end of the day, SNL, a lot of the times, you're not watching it live. You're going on YouTube. You're going and searching social media for all of these clips. And I think that that-- they have to take advantage of that. Certainly, the social engagement on Saturday was through the roof. And I think that's partially because Elon Musk, he tweets a lot. He's very active on social media. So I think that was a part of the discussion.

But I think just bringing more people into the conversation, allowing other people from different parts of the world to watch this episode at the same time certainly helps drive engagement. And we talked about the insane moves in Dogecoin. And Akiko, you mentioned earlier the fact that people were watching this live, and that the coin, the crypto, was trading in real-time. And I think that goes to speak to the potential reach for SNL. And I certainly think it's something that they could explore more in the future.

AKIKO FUJITA: The power of 53 million followers on Twitter-- that's just on Twitter. So, a lot of people watching it. Allie Canal, thanks so much for bringing that.