The secret to the success of “Saturday Night Live”

IN 1975 a 30-year-old Canadian named Lorne Michaels persuaded the least popular of America’s three broadcast television networks, NBC, to let him develop a live 90-minute sketch-comedy show. It would air at 11:30pm on Saturdays. Mr Michaels compared the time slot to “a vacant lot on the edge of town”, fringe enough to offer him the freedom to experiment. His cast was described as the “not ready for prime-time players”. Though the first episode included several actors who would become stars, including Chevy Chase and John Belushi, most people who tuned in would not have bet on longevity.

But on February 16th “Saturday Night Live” (SNL) will celebrate its 50th birthday on air, 979 episodes after its launch. A slew of tributes is also filling the airwaves. A new film, “Saturday Night”, dramatises the off-camera struggles of that first show; NBC has released a four-part behind-the-scenes series, as well as a terrific documentary about its musical guests.

No other television show has been nominated for, or won, more Emmys: 331 and 90, respectively. (“Game of Thrones”, in second place, claims 59 wins.) “SNL” has also minted some of the world’s most famous comedians, who have gone on to write, direct and star in popular television series and films. Millions of people still watch the show when it airs, and even more catch it online. More than 540m netizens have liked its videos on TikTok. Its longevity testifies to how skilfully it has balanced conservatism and innovation.

Start with conservatism. Anyone who watched “SNL” in its first season but not again until its 50th would find its structure and routines familiar. Each 90-minute episode features around ten sketches, two music performances and one “Weekend Update”, a parody of a news programme. Episodes take shape over six intense days in a collegial but competitive winnowing process. All sketches are run past a network censor, who excises obscene content as writers complain about oversensitivity. The show still uses handwritten cue cards instead of a teleprompter.

Hosts change weekly. Most often they are actors or comedians, though politicians, athletes and musicians have also featured. But the man at the top, Mr Michaels, is still there, 50 years later. In the history of American entertainment, only Alfred Hitchcock rivals him in longevity, John Mulaney, a comedian, has observed. “Lorne”, a new biography by Susan Morrison, an editor at the New Yorker, argues that Mr Michaels has a gift for choosing and shaping comedic talent that has changed the course of TV and popular humour. Phrases including “It’s always something” and “Well, isn’t that special” have entered the lexicon thanks to “SNL” skits.

Brought up in a middle-class Jewish home in Toronto, Mr Michaels tried performing himself but found it was not for him. He loved comedy and the counterculture of the 1960s but was always the straight man (“He was almost wearing an invisible necktie,” is how someone remembers him at that time). His personality served him well in the competitive snake pit that “SNL” often is: he could wrangle and cajole talent without worrying about his own act.

He has kept the humour of “SNL” clever but accessible, trying for jokes that can resonate across America, rather than just on the coasts. Mr Michaels still reminds writers, “You’ve got an audience in all 50 states.” Aiming at the broad centre gives the show licence to tackle sensitive subjects, including race, as when newscasters, two black and two white, compete to see which race produced more crime stories. Fans also enjoy it when two “Weekend Update” hosts, Colin Jost (white) and Michael Che (black), write offensive jokes for each other that they read aloud on air.

Despite its consistency, “SNL” has changed in ways that explain its endurance. It has taken to making shorter videos that can live online, so viewers can watch highlights and not the whole show. (These began in 2005, when “SNL” hired Andy Samberg, who made cheap “digital shorts” with friends. “Lazy Sunday”, a rap about cupcakes and Narnia, became one of YouTube’s first viral hits.) These digital clips have expanded the show’s audience: this season some 8.4m viewers have watched the show on TV and NBC’s Peacock app; meanwhile, online clips are averaging around 216m per episode on social platforms, such as TikTok, X and YouTube.

Its cast has also grown more diverse. Though the original cohort of actors featured outsize personalities at war with each other (Mr Chase had a reputation for inspiring hatred), “SNL” has come to prize low-key versatility. Young comics usually arrive with a background in stand-up or improv. Many writers also perform, and vice versa. Harper Steele, a former head writer, has said that one reason alumni have such varied careers as actors, directors, producers and writers is that on the show, everyone ends up doing a bit of everything. Tina Fey, for instance, was initially hired as a writer, but ended up performing and anchoring “Weekend Update”; after leaving “SNL” she wrote “Mean Girls”, a film, and created well-loved TV series including “30 Rock”.

Politics has been a mainstay of the show, which usually sees a ratings bump in election years. “SNL” has largely avoided the trap of “The Daily Show”, which attracts sententious applause by appealing to liberal sentiments. Instead, the show is an equal-opportunity mocker: James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump is boorish and loopy, and Maya Rudolph played Kamala Harris as a pandering striver.

Critics have repeatedly (and inaccurately) pronounced “SNL” dead. From the outside, what the show does looks replicable. But other sketch-comedy shows, including Fox’s “Mad TV”, have lacked similar staying power. The same is true of the roughly dozen versions of “SNL” that appeared briefly in other countries, including Canada, Finland, Italy and Japan. No other show has managed to combine the famous and the funny so consistently.

Larry David, who wrote briefly for “SNL” before creating “Seinfeld” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, has predicted that “SNL” “can go on for another 200 years”. But its fate is tied to that of its network, NBC, and traditional TV, which is beset by streaming and cord-cutting.

And there is the question of the show’s next act. Mr Michaels has said he has “no immediate plan” to retire, but he is 80 years old. The possible successors most often rumoured to take over are Ms Fey and Seth Meyers, who hosts a different late-night talk show on NBC. Whoever is selected will need to work out how to keep the show vital while resisting the temptation to tinker too much with a successful formula. But for now, it’s party time. ■