Overview - Saturday Night Live

Overview

A late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels. The show's comedy sketches, which parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers an opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, and features performances by a musical guest.

Seasons

• Name: Specials

  Episode: 228

  Date first aired: 1977-02-20

• Name: Season 1

  Episode: 24

  The first season of Saturday Night Live, the weekly late-night 90-minute American sketch comedy/variety show on NBC, aired during the 1975–1976 television season. Saturday Night Live premiered on October 11, 1975 and consisted of a total of 24 episodes, the last of which aired on July 31, 1976. In 1974, NBC Tonight Show host Johnny Carson requested that the weekend broadcasts of "Best of Carson" come to an end, so that Carson could take two weeknights off and NBC would thus air those repeats on those nights rather than feed them to affiliates for broadcast on either Saturdays or Sundays. Given Carson's undisputed status as the dean of late-night television, NBC heard his request as an ultimatum, fearing he might use the issue as grounds to defect to either ABC or CBS. To fill the gap, the network drew up some ideas and brought in Dick Ebersol – a protégé of legendary ABC Sports president Roone Arledge – to develop a 90-minute late-night variety show. Ebersol's first order of business was hiring a young Canadian producer named Lorne Michaels to be the show-runner.

  Date first aired: 1975-10-11

• Name: Season 2

  Episode: 22

  Saturday Night Live aired its second season during the 1976–1977 television season on NBC. The second season started on September 18, 1976, and ended on May 21, 1977. This season saw the first of many SNL cast changes. Chevy Chase, who was pursuing a movie career in California, left the show after the October 30th episode hosted by Buck Henry with musical guest, The Band. Jane Curtin became the first female cast member to become a Weekend Update anchor following Chase's departure. On the January 15, 1977 episode, Bill Murray joined the cast to fill the void left by Chase's departure. This season also saw another change in the show: its name. Following the cancellation of ABC's Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, NBC changed the name of the show from NBC's Saturday Night to its current title, Saturday Night Live in the episode hosted by Jack Burns in 1977. It was the last time that the Muppet sketches would appear on the show. In a 1977 interview with Playboy, O'Donoghue who was head writer/performer, referred to the Muppets as "those fucking Muppets, those little hairy facecloths" and were "made from the refuse after they cleaned up after Woodstock". He also refused to write for them, saying "I don’t write for felt". O'Donoghue also had a lynched Big Bird hanging in the writer's office.

  Date first aired: 1976-09-18

• Name: Season 3

  Episode: 20

  Saturday Night Live aired its third season during the 1977–1978 television season on NBC. The season began on September 24, 1977 and ended on May 20, 1978. The DVD for the entire season was released on May 13, 2008. The entire cast from the previous season returned for season three. The show also introduced the concept of the "featured player." Writers Tom Davis and Al Franken became cast members. The season is also notable for the contest, Anyone Can Host. During the start of the season the show advertised the contest for a non-celebrity to host the show. The winner was 80 year-old grandmother Miskel Spillman, the only non-celebrity to host an SNL episode. During Spillman's show the musical guest, Elvis Costello, halted his band, the Attractions, seven seconds into the song "Less Than Zero", launching into "Radio Radio", an as-yet unreleased song critical of mainstream broadcasting. The change angered Lorne Michaels, who banned future appearances on the show for a while. Chevy Chase's hosted during the season, making him the first cast member to host after leaving the show. Backstage during the show Chase and Bill Murray engaged in a physical altercation that was broken up by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. Chase later accused Murray of trying to upstage him on set and for making explicit remarks about Chase's wife. Chase would host the show several times throughout the show's history, though he was unpopular with the cast and crew.

  Date first aired: 1977-09-24

• Name: Season 4

  Episode: 20

  Saturday Night Live aired its fourth season during the 1978–1979 television season on NBC. The fourth season started on October 7, 1978 and ended on May 26, 1979. The season four DVD was released on December 2, 2008. The entire cast from the previous season returned. This would be the final season for Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi. Aykroyd and Belushi left to work on The Blues Brothers film.

  Date first aired: 1978-10-07

• Name: Season 5

  Episode: 20

  Saturday Night Live aired its fifth season during the 1979–1980 television season on NBC, and also the final season with the original cast. This fifth season started on October 13, 1979 and ended on May 24, 1980. SNL's fifth season was released on DVD on December 1, 2009. John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd left the show at the end of the fourth season, leaving a void in the cast that most fans thought would be the beginning of the end of the late-night sketch show. To keep the show going, Lorne Michaels upgraded many of the show's writers to cast member status: Peter Aykroyd, Jim Downey, Brian Doyle-Murray, Don Novello, Tom Schiller and Alan Zweibel. Band leader Paul Shaffer also joined the cast, becoming the first person from the SNL band to become a cast member. Harry Shearer joined the show as a featured cast member and was promoted to repertory status during the season. This would be the final season for everyone in the cast. Tom Davis and Downey would return to the show in future seasons as writers. Al Franken, Doyle-Murray, Novello, and Shearer would rejoin the cast in future seasons.

  Date first aired: 1979-10-13

• Name: Season 6

  Episode: 13

  Saturday Night Live aired its sixth season during the 1980–1981 television season on NBC. Season six started on November 15, 1980 and ended on April 11, 1981, with only 13 episodes. This season was alternatively known as Saturday Night Live '80.

  Date first aired: 1980-11-15

• Name: Season 7

  Episode: 20

  Saturday Night Live aired its seventh season during the 1981–1982 television season on NBC. The seventh season started on October 3, 1981 and ended on May 22, 1982. A total of 20 episodes were broadcast. Following the dismissal of producer Jean Doumanian and most of her cast members, the show was shut down due to the commencement of the 1981 WGA strike. Dick Ebersol, the program's developer, was hired as Doumanian's replacement. The new cast of Saturday Night Live for this season were the same ones from the episode Ebersol produced on the April 11, 1981 episode: Robin Duke, Tim Kazurinsky and Tony Rosato along with the Doumanian era's sole survivors Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo. Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius were fired following the April 1981 episode while Laurie Metcalf and unseen castmember Emily Prager weren't asked back to be cast members on the show. Ebersol then hired two new cast members: Mary Gross and Christine Ebersole. Both were hired to fill the gap left by Metcalf and Prager. Wanting to distance the show from its first five seasons, Ebersol cut the popular opening line Live from New York, It's Saturday Night! from the cold openings. In fact, sometimes cold openings weren't even shown and the monologues were skipped over almost entirely. These changes were not permanent, as Ebersol decided to reverse them for the eighth season.

  Date first aired: 1981-10-03

• Name: Season 8

  Episode: 20

  Saturday Night Live aired its eighth season during the 1982–1983 season on NBC. The 8th season started on September 25, 1982 and ended on May 14, 1983. This was the third season to air since Lorne Michaels had left his first tenure as executive producer. Many changes happened before the start of the season. Brian Doyle-Murray, Christine Ebersole and Tony Rosato were dropped from the show to make room for new cast members. Hired in their places were Brad Hall, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Gary Kroeger. Dick Ebersol brought back the show's cold openings that ended with "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!" and the monologues by the host. Ebersol also changed Weekend Update's name for the second time, to Saturday Night News. Since Doyle-Murray and Ebersole had both been dropped, a new anchor was needed for the segment. Hall got the gig and became the new anchor. Notable moments of this season included Drew Barrymore hosting the show—the youngest ever person to host the show. During the episode hosted by Barrymore, the audience at home was given the chance to vote on whether or not Andy Kaufman should be banned from the show. The vote was conducted by a 1-900 number. At the end of the show Kaufman was banned from ever performing on SNL again.

  Date first aired: 1982-09-25