Saturday Night Live (TV)

Identification Late-night television comedy-variety series

Date Premiered in 1975

Producer Lorne Michaels

Saturday Night Live ushered in a new style of television comedy built on irreverence, improvisation, and an almost total lack of inhibition, completely rewriting the standards of late-night home entertainment.

Key Figures

• Lorne Michaels (b. 1944), television producer

In the mid-1970s, late-night television was defined by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network’s Tonight Show and Johnny Carson, its affable host, which dominated the ratings during the week. However, reruns of his program that aired on Saturday failed to generate much of an audience, and it was generally assumed that most viewers—especially young adults—were finding their weekend entertainment away from their television sets. In a move to create a reason for these viewers (who were especially attractive to advertisers) to tune in, NBC executive Dick Ebersol hired writer-comedian Lorne Michaels to put together a program geared to this youthful demographic.

Michaels took on the challenge with enthusiasm and assembled a program that had little to do with the traditional Tonight Show model. Each week, the program revolved around a guest host, usually someone with “hip” credentials such as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, or Lily Tomlin. These hosts, in addition to their opening monologue, would perform in sketches, supported by a repertory troupe dubbed the Not Ready for Prime Time Players. Each program also featured a musical guest, often chosen for their offbeat or underground appeal as opposed to success on the pop charts. Early on, sketches featuring Jim Henson’s Muppets (though not the lovable characters from Sesame Street) and short films by Gary Weis and Albert Brooks were also recurring elements of the show. Much of the tone of the program was set early on by head writer Michael O’Donoghue, whose dark and twisted sense of humor imbued the show with a strong dose of sinfulness.

One key aspect of Saturday Night Live, perhaps the component that gave it its greatest edge, was that it was broadcast live each week, providing audiences with the sensation that almost anything might happen. This made network executives nervous, especially once it became clear that Michaels, O’Donoghue, and the cast were intent on pushing the limits of acceptable television fare. This risk factor generated considerable interest in the show from the start, and within just a few weeks, it developed into a full-fledged media phenomenon. Suddenly, people had a reason to stay home on Saturday night, and the program attracted a large, devoted following.

A Star Vehicle

While Michaels held off the network censors, his writers and performers blossomed. Very quickly, members of the regular cast began to emerge from their support roles and supplant the guest hosts as the true stars of Saturday Night Live. Chevy Chase was the first breakout figure, largely because of his solo spot as host of the news show parody “Weekend Update” and his patented pratfalls that opened each episode. Despite the often black elements of his material, his good looks and boyish charm caused many to imagine him as the heir to Carson’s chair on The Tonight Show. Before the end of the second year, he left the cast for a shot at Hollywood, proving very early that Saturday Night Live could be a launching pad for more substantial entertainment careers.

With Chase’s departure, other cast members moved to the forefront. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were masterful satirists who recognized few boundaries in picking the targets of their incisive barbs. Their characterizations were often intense and menacing. Even superficially affectionate tributes, such as their Blues Brothers musical act, reflected an attitude that all show business was marked by an underlying sordidness.

Gilda Radner was a more lovable performer. Her Emily Litella and Roseanne Roseannadanna characters retained a basic sweetness, even as they innocently stomped on their share of sacred cows. Jane Curtin replaced Chase on “Weekend Update” and naturally projected an air of professionalism that added extra sting to her barbs on current events and prominent figures. Bill Murray was the glib goofball who was expert at projecting slimy insincerity in his portrayals of Nick the Lounge Singer and the quintessential nerd, Todd DiLamuca. Larraine Newman and Garrett Morris were less associated with recurring characters, but their versatility allowed them to inject any character that they played with the requisite comic bite that was a hallmark of the program.

By 1979, the original cast and writing team ran out of steam. Aykroyd and Belushi had already followed Chase to Hollywood, and Murray was soon to follow. Michaels felt that he could no longer maintain the grind of a weekly live show and turned his creation over to the network, which retooled and relaunched the program with an entirely new cast in the fall of 1980.

Impact

Saturday Night Live turned a group of essentially underground performers into mass media stars. As the Not Ready for Prime Time Players (and frequent guests such as Steve Martin and Andy Kaufman) branched out into other media, most notably film, they carried the show’s innovative satiric pulse with them. Tina Fey, who was hired as the show's first female head writer, became one of SNL's lead performers and starred in a spin-off show of her own, 30-Rock, which was based on her roles at SNL. Late-night show hosts Conan O'Brien, Dennis Miller, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers all started out writing and/or performing on SNL. Throughout its decades-long run, the show and its biting form of humor, which acknowledged virtually no limits in targets or comic weapons employed, has helped redefine the comedy landscape across American popular culture.

Subsequent Events

The show is one of the longest running Over the decades, the program has continued to evolve, with performers coming and going. Many, such as Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mike Myers, Bill Murray, Billy Crystal, Tina Fey, and Will Ferrell went on to substantial success in film or prime-time television. Al Franken, a writer and cast member from 1975 to 1995, published four books about politics and became a politician himself. He served as a US senator for Minnesota from 2009 to 2018 before he was accused of sexual harassment by an anonymous woman and resigned.

In 1985, Michaels returned to his creation as producer, and although the program’s popularity and cultural cachet have waxed and waned over the years, it has remained a mainstay of late-night programming and a valuable venue for the nurturing of comic talent into the twenty-first century. Michaels has won nine individual Emmy Awards for producing and writing the show itself, as well as six more for the SNL spin-off 30-Rock and unrelated variety specials.

In 2019, the show aired its forty-fifth season and won five out of the nine Emmy Awards for which it received nominations. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, the show won consecutive Emmys for outstanding variety sketch series, bringing its total to eighty-two wins by 2022. Notable Emmy-winning performers and writers for the show include Alec Baldwin, Dana Carvey, Dave Chappelle, Chase, Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Amy Poehler, and Gilda Radner. The show has also won two Peabody Awards (1990, 2008) and four Writers' Guild of America Awards (2001, 2007, 2009, and 2010).

Bibliography

Cader, Michael, ed. “Saturday Night Live”: The First Twenty Years. Cader Books, 1994.

Hill, Doug, and Jeff Weingard. Saturday Night: A Backstage History of “Saturday Night Live.” Vintage Books, 1987.

Itzkoff, Dave. "Lorne Michaels Discussed the 'Year of Reinvention' Coming to 'S.N.L.'" The New York Times, 23 Sept. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/arts/television/lorne-michaels-saturday-night-live.html. Accessed 19 Oct. 2022.

Shales, Tom, and James Andrew Miller. Live from New York: An Uncensored History of “Saturday Night Live.” Little, Brown, 2002.