1) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. Maybe we worried too much about which stars had left; we should have fretted about writers leaving. Except for “Weekend Update,” last week’s season-opener was short on wit. This material couldn’t have been saved by Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant … or even by Belushi or Murray or Wiig and such. Let’s hope it improves now, with Brendan Gleeson as host and Willow (shown here), formerly Willow Smith, as music guest.
2) “iHeartRadio Music Festival,” 8-10 p.m., CW. This is the second half of a four-hour special, stuffed with stars. Over Friday and today, we’ll get country (Maren Morris, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen), rap (Pitbull, LL Cool J), tech (Diplo) and more, including Halsey, Lionel Richie, Avril Lavigne, Sam Smith, Megan Thee Stallion, Black Keys and Black Eyed Peas.
3) “The Disappearance of Cari Farver,” 8 p.m., Lifetime. When a boyfriend broke up with Farver, he received a deluge of threatening e-mails; so did one of his ex-girlfriends. Also, Farver vanished; Lea Thompson plays her mother, who continued the search. That film is surrounded by reruns portraying more-famous cases – at 6 p.m., the disappearance of Gabby Petito; at 10, the Cleveland woman who was held hostage for 11 years.
4) College football. This is one of the rare nights when each of the big-four networks has a game. At 7:30, ABC has Clemson (ranked No. 5) at Boston, Fox has Washington State at Southern California (No. 6) and NBC has Brigham Young (No. 16) at Notre Dame. At 8, CBS has top-ranked Alabama hosting Texas A&M.
5) And baseball. It’s the second night of wild-card playoff games, which were tentatively set for noon and 8 p.m. on ESPN2 and 4 and 7:30 p.m. on ESPN. These are best-of-three; any third games needed will be Sunday, setting up new rounds Tuesday on TBS and on Fox or Fox Sports1.