1) “Saturday Night Live,” 11:29 p.m., NBC. Steve Martin and Martin Short (or Steve Martin Short for, well, short) combine to host., with Brandi Carlile as music guest. Martin has hosted “SNL” 14 times – going back 46 years — but hasn’t done it in the past dozen years. He also co-hosted once (with Short and others), co-hosted the Oscars (with Alec Baldwin) and stars with Short and Selena Gomez in the dandy “Only Murders in the Building” (shown here).
2) “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman,” 8 and 9 p.m., CBS. These two often go together on CBS; a couple weeks ago, they were split apart so “Rudolph” could lead into the new “Reindeer in Here.” Now Frosty and Rudolph are back together; they’ll also be side-by-side on Freeform, on Dec. 21, 22, 24 and 25.
3) “Kirk Franklin’s The Night Before Christmas,” 8 p.m., Lifetime. After conquering the urban-gospel world — 16 Grammys, 22 Doves – Franklin turned to holiday movies. Last year’s film, “A Gospel Christmas,” reruns at 6 p.m., leading into this one: Battered by a blizzard, a woman and her estranged daughter find refuge in a church; so do some parishioners and the music director (Franklin).
4) More (and less) new Christmas movies. A musical remake of “Snow Day,” originally set for today, has been pushed back to Dec. 16 on Nickelodeon and Paramount Plus. But other new films are on Hallmark, UpTV and Great American Family. At 8 p.m., GAF debuts “The Art of Christmas.” A truly gorgeous artist (Brigette Kingsley) has a dullard boyfriend, then bumps into (literally) an affable hockey guy. We’re starting to guess what will happens.
5) Basketball. With one exception (the Army-Navy game, at 3 p.m. ET on CBS), college football has a pre-bowl vacation this week. So two networks insert basketball in prime time. It’s college at 7:30 p.m. ET on Fox (Arizona, ranked No. 10, and Indiana, No. 14) and pros at 8:30 on ABC (Celtics-Warriors). Also, the Heisman Trophy ceremony is 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.