This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.
So, let me get this straight. Your company has data here, there, and everywhere. But your AI can't use the data because It's here, there and everywhere. Seems like something's missing. Every business has unique data.
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Okay. 10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is when mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This. Is Trainer Game? Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.
Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com. This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Uh Hear that? That's what it sounds like when you plant more trees than you harvest. Work done by thousands of working forest professionals like Adam, a district forest manager who works to protect our forests from fires.
Keeping the forest fire-resistant synonymous with keeping a forest healthy, and we do that through planting more than we harvest and mitigate those risks through active management. It's a long-term commitment. Visit WorkingForestsInitiative.com to learn more. Shh. You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs.
Is your child having conversations you never imagined? Are they learning without realizing it? It's not a tablet. It's not a toy. It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning.
Hear the future of playtime. Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus. Only at Costco. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star. and the American people.
Up next, the story of Saturday Night Live. Here to tell it is Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider. The hosts of the podcast wasn't that special. 50 years of SNL. Scott is also the general manager.
of Radio Free Hillsdale. Take it away, Scott. Bye. From New York, it's Saturday night! The show is Saturday nights.
As the title indicates, it is live at 11:35 Eastern. It is 90 minutes in length, produced and written generally over the course of really less than a week when you get down to it. That's part of what makes it so interesting, dangerous, exciting. I think the phrase I heard Lauren use once was: the show goes on at 11:30, not because it's ready, but because it's 11:30. Each show has a different guest host as involved as he or she wants in the process.
Guest hosts have been outstanding: Tom Hanks, Steve Martin, John Goodman. Great to be back in New York, hosting Saturday Night Live for my 11th time. Varying hosts have been totally horrible. Louise Lasser, Stephen Seagal. Listen to me carefully.
I don't want you to talk about anything to me anymore. I don't want you to say my name anymore. I ain't see you any movies, and what's the afro anyway? You look like Link from the mod squad. You're going to have most times two performances by a musical guest occasionally with a huge star like a Paul Simon back in the day or Bruce Springsteen.
They will do three songs during the course of the night. There aren't a lot of rules.
Well, one of the big rules, this is a Lorne rule, is that what they do on the show are sketches, not skits. Lauren said, children do skits. We do sketches on Saturday Night Live. On a typical show, you're probably going to have eight sketches. And the length of a sketch, I mean, there are some seasons where you have a cold open, which is the very first thing that happens on the show before the opening montage.
And we've had some cold opens that have been like 50 seconds long. It's a little short to be effective, but that's happened. We've had some sketches. What was the Carter sketch with the nuclear fallout? In which Jimmy Carter is exposed to some nuclear fallout at Three Mile Island, and he grows into a giant.
Mr. President! You're glowing! Don't touch me. I'm a nuclear engineer and I'm pretty worried right now.
And that sketch was something ridiculous like 15 or 16 minutes long. It worked, it was great, it was fantastic, but it was really long. Most sketches are gonna land somewhere between four minutes and seven minutes. That's probably the sweet spot. Does it have to deal with current events?
Not necessarily. Can it? Absolutely. Here's the thing: does it have to have an ending? No, not necessarily.
There are tons of classic SL sketches that don't really end, they just stop. And that's okay. That's the way that they write occasionally.
So I don't think there are a lot of rules in terms of what that sketch looks like, as long as it is. Funny. Is it going to be two minutes or 10 minutes?
Well, what's funny? Is it going to have two cast members or 10 cast members?
Well, what's funny? Who do we have available? Do we need to get extras in to play some people who don't have a big enough cast? The only rule is be funny. And one of the benefits of having a show that is both live and weekly.
is that it gets to touch upon the topics of the week. For people to sit there at home and say, Oh my gosh, that just happened three days ago, and now there's a guy in a wig playing the president, whether it's a George H.W. Bush sketch. None of us want war in that whole area out over there. But as Commander-in-Chief, I am ever cognizant of my authority to launch a full-scale orgy of death there on the desert sand.
Probably won't. Then again, I mine. Uh Where he just said something a couple days earlier, and Dana Carvey turns it into a masterclass impersonation. saying exactly what happened. You know, that's uh funny.
That's almost A great almanac of American history. Almost every show has a news segment, right SmackDab in the middle of the show, where they are at times writing jokes quite literally as the show is on the air. There are stories of writers underneath the Weekend Update desk typing out jokes to hand to the Weekend Update anchor who is on the air. The fact that it is live. Adds a dimension of danger to it.
You know, we can go back and watch these episodes, and, you know, in some episodes, Tim Kazarinsky is acting with a monkey.
Well, obviously nothing bad happened because. Tim Kazarinski is still very much alive, but when you're watching the show at the time in 1982, 83, whenever it was, You don't know that. In fact, there are times during their practice runs where the monkey kind of almost attacked Tim Kazarinski and there was real danger involved.
So The fact that there is the danger on the air, you have sometimes some really edgy comedians that you don't know what they're gonna say on live television, it just turns into this. Relevant and high wire act, that's really what the show had going for it. There are three names you have to know at the beginning of Saturday Night Live. Without any of these three people, there would be no SNL. Herb Schlosser, president of NBC at the time.
Dick Ebersoll, a 27-year-old in 1975 who had spent nine months as the director of weekend late-night programming. and Lauren Michaels. The first executive producer of the show. I don't think anybody encourages anybody to go into show business because it generally doesn't work out well and it's a hard life. I think I was probably on a course to do something sensible.
I think I would have gone to law school, probably. This all started because NBC needed to find a replacement for Johnny Carson reruns on Saturday nights. They would run Johnny Carson reruns on Saturdays, and Johnny said, We're not gonna do that anymore, right? I don't want you to dilute the market by playing more of my shows on Saturdays. The king of Lake Night got his wish.
NBC hired 27-year-old Dick Eversall to come up with a replacement for the Carson Reruns. I had no background in entertainment at all, and it was my assignment. I had a year to roam around the country and put together a comedy show. The show was essentially to be whatever I came up with, and if it had any kind of traction, they guaranteed it would stay on the air six months.
So they gave you six months. Yeah. And Lord Michaels is the name that sort of rises to the top of the list as potential executive producers. And he chose me, which was a very smart choice. And when we come back, more of the story of SNL.
Here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, and I'm inviting you to help Our American Stories celebrate this country's 250th birthday coming soon. If you want to help inspire countless others to love America like we do and want to help us bring the inspiring and important stories told here about a good and beautiful country, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Any amount helps. Go to ouramericanstories.com and give.
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you. will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is when mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. Peggy. It's Trainer Game. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
Mm-hmm.
So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage? Just adds more to manage, on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages. Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business.
Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.
Okay. Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award-winning reporting. For a limited time, access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks.
That's a great deal for the first year. After that, it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel any time. But don't wait, this Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to Washington Post dot com slash iHeart and grab this deal before it's gone.
That's Washington Post dot com slash iHeart. This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.
OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com. This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Where did that story come from?
Book? Dream? Nope, it came from a conversation. Meet Miko Mini Plus, the AI companion that co-creates personalized story adventures with your child in real time. What color was the hamster's cape?
And what did he pack for lunch? Unlock your child's imagination. Discover Miko Mini Plus and the magic of AI exclusively at Costco. And we return to Our American Stories and the story of Saturday Night Live, telling the story of Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider. You're also hearing the voice of Lauren Michaels himself.
The executive producer of SNL, and others involved in the show's creation. Let's get back to the story. You know, Lauren is... An interesting guy. There are a few things he's famous for.
He always has Fresh popcorn in his office, always. There are assistants to Lorne Michaels whose only job is to make sure he always has fresh popcorn at the ready. He does not like firing people. In some cases, it's almost as if he wants you to get tired of it and quit rather than he has to act to fire someone. He's also very famous for making people wait so that he has the upper hand in a conversation.
If you schedule a meeting with Lauren and there's stories and books all over the place, expect to be waiting two or three hours. He would just make you wait in the hallway and continue on his business and eventually talk to you when he was ready. I wish there were. a very in-depth look at him and what he's done on the show because for many people, he is still something of an enigma. You don't like to talk about yourself, do you?
Not much, no. You're very private, very personal? I don't know how private I am, but I I think uh, you know, it's Yeah. Dick Ebersoll is in charge of Lake Knight Programming, and Lord Michaels is the name that sort of rises to the top of the list as potential executive producers. And he chose me, which was a very smart choice.
And he took on this challenge of designing.
Something from nothing. Michaels was 31 and he had worked in comedy for about seven, eight years at this point. He had worked for Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, he had worked for the Phyllis Diller Show, he had worked for CBC Radio in Canada. That's him on the left. Playing straight man to a beaver.
Smokey the bear is turning on. Yes, and I think that's atrocious. And that was important. Lorne Knew not just what he wanted SNL to be, but he also knew what he wanted SNL to not be. Writing for TV comedies surprised him.
It wasn't much fun. It's not telling jokes, it's just that spirit. The goofiness, just the fun of it. was missing. What you had on those shows is a lot of people really hamming it up.
you know, Tim Conway and Carol Burnett trying to make each other crack during sketches. There'll be a little bit of pain and then numbness will set in. Basically you have them laughing at each other.
Sometimes the crowd comes along, but the sketches often devolve into just silliness where everybody just completely goes off script. Lorne wanted something completely different than that. He frowns upon really hamming it up in sketches and trying to make each other break. He thinks you're there to do your business, and he didn't want that type of Carol Burnett type of comedy. Michael's envisioned a show more like Britain's Monty Python.
groundbreaking, unconventional. And less predictable. Lorne Michaels would say: I want to do a show for the generation that grew up on TV.
Something that was not in the mold of the comedy shows of the 50s and the 60s. He tried to communicate that to the suits at NBC. They listened to what I said, and I used all the words that people use all the time, which were like that it would be a little experimental and they wanted to have comedians on, stand-up comedians. They didn't want to do interviews like they did on late-night shows. I knew that it would be.
A repertory company, and I knew that there'd be a different host every week.
So, guest stars, at some point, they considered having a rotating group of three or four hosts and instead went with a different host each week, essentially. And I knew that there'd be short films on it. They early on had contracted with Jim Henson to have some of his Muppets on board and a group of young comedians. to do these sketches and we'll have music acts.
So, as I describe it, it sounds like a variety comedy show, which it was. But the difference was all in the attitude and the attitude that Lauren wanted to bring to the show. The network bought Michael's concept. They had no idea. They had just agreed to host a revolution.
Gear were running in Rockefeller Center at that point because the city was going broke. There was nothing but space available at 30 Rock. We looked at various places for offices and ended up on the 17th floor. And then I began hiring people. NBC was not accustomed to people doing business the way that Lauren Michaels and his staff did business.
Lorne, in fact, when he was hiring for the show, One of the only prerequisites he had was you could not have experience on TV. NBC wanted Michaels to hire mainstream talent, like Impressionist Rich Little and football star Joe Naiman. Instead, Michaels sought a cast that more resembled the audience he was trying to attract. A group of disaffected baby boomers that became known as the not ready for prime time players. And so while you had all this going on at the network level, the question becomes: well, where does the talent come from?
Where do we get the people that are going to be on this show? They scoured the country. In the early 1970s, a countercultural publication named National Lampoon started publishing. It was rough at first. Maddie Simmons, I think the only publication that he had actually produced before that time was like a women's underwear magazine or something.
And eventually, National Lampoon branched out and began doing radio shows and stage shows. One of the stage shows was called Lemmings. They ended up with two college roommates, one named Chevy Chase and one named Christopher Guest. I met Chevy on a line at a thing called FilmX, which was a sort of film festival in LA. Waiting.
To see the new Monty Python film. Michaels offered Chevy a job as a writer. Chevy wanted to be a performer. They couldn't make a deal, so I just turned it down. and started to do a play with Paul Lind.
And I just was the wrong guy for it.
So I picked, I went to a payphone only perhaps a day before I was to be fired anyway. And called Lauren in New York and said, Is that offer still good? And he said, Yes, it is. Lemmings also featured a young Christopher guest. They ended up with a young man named John Belushi.
Belushi wanted to be on Michael's new show. Yet he acted as though TV was somehow beneath him. He says, I know you're doing this television show, and I said, Yeah, we're doing it. And he says, Uh you know, I I I I don't do television. There's nothing good on television.
So I say, right. I mean, I certainly respect that, but what I'm doing is a television show.
So thanks for coming in and he said, well, no, I mean, you're going to be doing something different. And everybody says that you're on to. And I go, but I don't want you to do me any favors. Michaels hired Belushi.
So one of the best parts of the show is that rarely do they take cast members who you had actually heard of before. The show is basically in the business of finding new American talent and a lot of that talent has gone on to be some of the biggest names in American popular entertainment. And that's how it started off at the beginning. Nobody really knew who Gilda Radner was. Nobody knew who Dan Aykroyd was.
He was some guy from Second City in Toronto. John Belushi wasn't a big name. But that really is it. And Lorne Michaels. For the entirety of the show, he has been the primary talent evaluator, which is incredible.
He still does it today. Lauren just has the eye, he deserves all the credit. The other thing to note is: if you watch the first couple of seasons of this show, you will note it is not called Saturday Night Live. It is called NBC's Saturday Night. That is because at the same time NBC was launching this show, ABC was launching a different show hosted by Howard Kosell.
And ABC was first to the post with the show, and they called it. You guessed it, Saturday Night Live. Interesting enough, there were a number of future SNL cast members that were on this Saturday Night Live, including Brian Dooley Murray, Christopher Guest, and Bill Murray, too. That show was a total flop. And it was canceled very quickly.
And so, two and a half, three years after the fact, they went to get Howard Kosell's permission. which I think was more of a nicety than a requirement to rebrand NBC's Saturday Night as officially Saturday Night Live. And you've been listening to Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider tell the story of SNL. And Lauren Michaels' talent was spotting talent, it turns out, and also creating this new space where Carson reruns once existed. creating a variety show that had a new kind of attitude.
That was a healing. to a new generation. when we come back. More of the story of SNL. Here on Our American Stories.
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you. Will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This. It's Trainer Games. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
So, you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage. Just adds more to manage, on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages. Funny how that works. Any business can add AI. IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business.
Let's create Smarter Business. IBM.
Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award-winning reporting. For a limited time, access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year.
After that, it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel any time. But don't wait, this Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to Washington Post dot com slash iHeart and grab this deal before it's gone. That's Washington Post dot com slash iHeart.
This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation.
Learn more at don'tsleep on osa.com. This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Shh! You won't believe what my new friend just told me about dinosaurs! Is your child having conversations you never imagined?
Are they learning without realizing it? It's not a tablet. It's not a toy. It's Miko Mini Plus, the AI-powered companion that turns curiosity into endless learning. Hear the future of playtime.
Meet the extraordinary Miko Mini Plus. Only at Costco. And we return to our American stories and the story of SNL. Let's pick up. where we last left off.
Before we say goodbye, again, my thanks to Jerry Lewis for sitting still for an extended interview on this program. And as I said at the outset of our broadcast tonight, beginning on October the 11th, Saturday night, we'll open up a whole new live venture from New York City from Studio 8H. And we just happen to have Mr. Lauren Michaels with us, the producer of Saturday Night and members of his company. And let's spend a couple of minutes talking about your show.
Lauren, I'd like to meet your gang. This is Kevin Chase. Were you named after the town in Maryland, or is that your real name? That's my real name. I was named that two days after I was born.
Dan Ayroyd, Jane Curtin. Jane? Uh Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, John Belushi. And Lorraine. Lorraine.
Will all of you be seen every week doing improv or repertoire or how does it work?
Well, October 11th, 1975, the very first episode of SNL. This show is way overbooked. They went through a dress rehearsal. It's a 90-minute show. The dress rehearsal went for three and a half hours.
And so Lauren had to go about the task of cutting things. George Carla is the guest host.
Now your first host is George Carlin. George Carnan. He probably will say the seven words which cannot be said on television, huh? Live, yeah. There is a six-second delay, but some of those words have eight or nine letters.
You know the seven, don't you, that you can't say in television? Big name. They asked me to be the first host. And I knew that I was stepping a little out of my world. because it was sketch comedy.
I really wasn't a born actor. And I told Lauren Michaels on the first Saturday Night Live, and I'm full of cocaine that week, full of cocaine, just completely boxed. And um I said to him that I didn't want to be in the sketches. Let me do a number of monologues. Instead of doing a big opening monologue, And then being in sketches, let me do a lot of little monologues.
And he did. When you watch the first few episodes of Saturday Night Live, It is barely recognizable to what you see today. What should we look for on your program? Anxiety. Fire.
Yep. Or, really, what you'd see by the end of season one. That's how quickly they began adjusting. We certainly didn't have our format for a while. God.
I would say seven or eight shows. And we had the Muppets. Jim Henson has put together a new batch. A whole new group of Muppets, which are adult Muppets and who can stay up late. And I think the Muppets were there because Bernie Brilstein, who manages Lorne, Also manage the Muffets.
Albert Brooks has done a short film which is very funny. didn't fit in with puppets. Even though I love the Muppets, you know. Jeez, there must be something else on nature. There are extremely few sketches involved in what they called at that time the not ready for primetime players.
The cast of the show was not involved all that much on the program. We had very little to do. I don't even remember what I did. I think we were just bees.
So I had no lines.
So when that first show ended that night, what did you do after? Um There was a party at some dark restaurant and I remember Paul Simon being there and the second show is in essence a Simon and Garfunkel reunion show. It's essentially a music special. It's around this time though you do see some elements of the show start to creep in. Belushi does his first Joe Cocker impression.
You also have the first recurring characters in show history, the bees. The bees also do something that SNL would do frequently throughout its time, which is breaking the fourth wall with the audience. The bees are actually addressing us. And they're something else SNL does extremely well is taking what happens behind the scenes at SNL and putting them in front of everyone to see. Ah, no, that's it.
That's it. Stop it.
Now, now, if you saw the first show, you saw with George Collin, the bees did not work. And then the second show, the bees were horrendous. How many times do I have to say it? I don't want the damn bees. I'm sorry if you think we're ruining your show, Mr.
Reiner.
So you don't understand. Uh We didn't ask to be beats. The bees in this show are complaining because they're not on the show enough, and the cast is upset. The cast was upset. They weren't getting the time they thought they wanted.
They weren't getting the chance to develop. And then you have Episode 4. That's when Something clicks. They found a great host, Candace Bergen. She shows up as a big movie star.
She's really the first host that. Is really down with the program. She knows what the show is about. She knows what the show could be. And she throws herself completely into this new format.
Good evening. This is Candace Bergen reporting from... One of those little third world countries, and I'm talking to the ruler of that country, His Royal Highness King. To suffocate. Listen, I can't pronounce this name.
Okay, here's your pen back. Allow me to just stick it up your nose. Why would you think I would want 10 in those? It's really when you start to see more sketches, fewer ten. Yeah, yeah.
And then at some point she introduces a young comedian. Boys and girls, this is a man that I love very much. The word genius comes to mind, but I will let you decide for yourselves. And his name is Andy Kaufman. Right now.
I would like to do for you.
Some limitations So First. Yeah. I would like to imitate Archie Bunker. You stop it. You are so stupid.
Everybody is stupid. Get get out of my chair, Meethan. You go. In the the thing but get into the kitchen making the food. Uh every everybody is stupid.
I don't like nobody is is so stupid. Thank you very much. Virtually everything that he does is genius, and it's something. That people at home had not seen on television. You couldn't see this stuff anywhere else on television.
The Bergen episode is also important because it's the first time that Chubby Chase on Weekend Update says: Good evening, I'm Chubby Chase. I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not. Also important, it's the first time that Chevy Chase plays Gerald Ford. First time SNI really delves into political humor. Chevy used to do this thing that could make me laugh more than anything, which was he'd fall, but he'd fall in a restaurant.
He could take out a, you know, he could take out a table. He was just brilliant doing it. Then somehow, Ford fell. And then somehow Chevy became Jerub Ford. That's the final Christmas tree ornament on the tree.
No problem. No matter what. The first time that you could say that SNL is Impacting culture. Essel is satirizing Gerald Ford pretty hard. Chevy Chase playing him as a dunce.
Can't walk down the hall without crashing into a wall. There's a story about Al Franken running into Ron Nessen, who was the press secretary for. President Ford. And there is an idea in the White House in Ron Nessen that says: if we go on the show, And laugh at ourselves and show we're in on the joke, it will blunt the effectiveness of this humor because they could feel that what SNL was doing was having an effect on how Americans were viewing the president. And Ron Nessen comes on to host.
Fear in the White House was that they were going to do a show that was. hyper-critical of the president. They're going to make fun of the president in front of the president's guy. And that's not what happened. Instead, what SNL did was put on the crassest.
Grossest Comedy that they could come up with. They're literally pureing a fish live on television. It was a different kind of counterculture. That NASIM episode is the first time when you see the streams cross, so to speak. Comedy, politics, culture.
And you've been listening to Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider. Telling the story of SNL with all kinds of voices in between, some you know, some you may not. When we come back. More of this remarkable story, the story of Saturday Night Live. Here on Our American Story.
10 athletes will face the toughest job interview in fitness that will push past physical and mental breaking points. You are the fittest of the fit. Only one of you. will leave here with an IFIT contract for $250,000. This is where mindset comes in.
Someone will be eliminated. Pressure is coming down. This. It's Trainer Game. Watch it on Prime Video starting January 8th.
Yeah. So you're telling me that the AI that's meant to make everyone's job easier to manage? Just adds more to manage, on top of the thousands of apps the IT department already manages. Funny how that works. Any business can add AI.
IBM helps you scale and manage AI to change how you do business. Let's create Smarter Business. IDM.
Okay. Come for the Black Friday seasonal savings. Stay for the award-winning reporting. For a limited time, access to the Washington Post is just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks.
That's a great deal for the first year. After that, it'll cost $12 every four weeks. You can cancel any time. But don't wait, this Black Friday seasonal offer won't be here for long. Go to Washington Post dot com slash iHeart and grab this deal before it's gone.
That's Washington Post dot com slash iHeart. This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA, in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability, and concentration issues, it may be due to OSA.
OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don't sleep on osa.com. This information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company. Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean. Where did that story come from?
Book? Dream? Nope, it came from a conversation. Meet Miko Mini Plus, the AI companion that co-creates personalized story adventures with your child in real time. What color was the hamster's cape?
And what did he pack for lunch? Unlock your child's imagination. Discover Miko Mini Plus and the magic of AI exclusively at Costco. And we return to our American stories and the story of SNL, telling it for Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider, host of the podcast, Wasn't That Special? 50 Years of SNL.
Let's get back to the story. This was not a ratings smash hit at the beginning. The first show was a 23 share. The Bergen show, while great, was a 16 share.
Now, remember, You have essentially three networks at this time.
So if NBC's got a 16 share, that means ABC and CBS are combining for an 84 share.
So those numbers are bad. NBC was losing a lot of money on SNL in the beginning of that first season. But. There were bright spots. It was raw.
immediate, unpredictable. The culture of America's baby boomers had finally found its way to TV. The revolution was being televised. 75% of SNL viewers were between the ages of 18 and 49, the largest percentage of those viewers of any show on television. I think that generally when people talk about the best cast, I think, well, that's when they were in high school.
Uh because in high school you have the least amount of power you're ever gonna have. You don't get to drive, you don't have any money. Staying up with friends late on a Saturday is great and people attach to a cast. And everyone associated with SNL at that time acted as if success was guaranteed. It was going to happen.
But people aren't with us now, but they will be. Called it a manifest destiny hit. If we just keep doing what we're doing, the people will find us and will love us. This show is going to be a hit. That's how everyone carried themselves, even in the early going.
The show stands on their shoulders. They were them and. Every aspect of the taste of the show came from really seriously creative people. It's like you put in the room these writers and cast members and they're all nuts and you know that you're crazy and everyone's nuts and you say You're crazy. I know you are too.
Um There is no manual on how to write for SNL. You're basically thrown in the deep end and they hand you a, in the old days they used to hand you a pad and a pencil and say, start writing. The writer's room is, by all accounts, is insanely competitive. You are competing for, again, 90 minutes a week, but when you take out commercials, you take out weekend update, you take out the musical performances, there are seven or eight spots. In which you are fighting for.
And there are legendary stories about people trying to. Submarine each other's sketches, maybe not laugh at a sketch in the read-through if you don't want it to hit the air. You're competing for airtime. I'd say the first two years I was there, I had a difficult time pitching my skits. I would.
be very uh terrified that uh it would get The idea I thought was so great. I would get shut down in the room and there was no uh getting out of it. If you'd if sometimes when you would pitch something on a Monday and nobody laughed, it would have uh A bad spin on it already. Dire in years when there are a huge number of cast members and a huge number of writers. but generally through the course of the week.
It moves incredibly quickly. By Monday, you've got to put the Saturday show behind you. There's a meeting with the host in the afternoon, late afternoon, and someone said, this is the meeting in which you lie to the host and say the show's going to be great because we have all these ideas, when in fact you have nothing. It's a little schizophrenic in the sense that you can have a tremendously successful Saturday night. Everything's gone great.
And then you go to the party and you feel great. And then you end hip and you're in New York and everything. And by Monday night, if you don't have anything, you're really in a panic because you don't have any ideas. Finding out what's funny is often a matter of trial and error. Writer and cast members in a search for silliness.
Tuesday, the writers begin to bounce ideas.
Sometimes they'll write alone, sometimes they'll team up. Generally, There are a lot of two-person written sketches. More than that, not so much. But Tuesday is the writing day because by Wednesday, you've got to do read-throughs.
So, Tuesday is the day you're writing. Every writer and cast member is expected to have at least one idea. A lot of people will spend all-nighters from Tuesday into Wednesday writing, rewriting, getting things set for the Wednesday read-through. To me, it's like, you know, like final exams every week. It's that intense.
And there are legendary stories about what fuels those Tuesday all-nighters. I always say, it would be impossible. to do the kind of show we do week after week. and do drugs. Which actually was the opposite of the truth.
But yeah, but but it sounded Okay.
So, the read-through is on Wednesday. By midday or so, they begin to have to make some choices about what they think they're going to use on the show because you've got to get scripts ready. Cue cards have to be written, right? Because the cue cards are written during the live show. You have to get sets created and built for all these different sketches and find out where they're going to go and how you're going to transition in a three-minute commercial break from one thing to another.
And then you. You do a dress rehearsal, which is the first time Three, four hundred people come in and see it. But there are changes happening all the time. Whatever you thought, Yeah. If they disagree, they're right.
We will we adjust from that things that you thought were surefire don't play and a lot of it is placement where they were in the show like If it's a harder piece, if you play it early, it probably won't work. And so it's where you play things, running order. and also topicality. Cube cards are being rewritten all the time. Again, that famous Lauren quote: If the show doesn't go on because it's ready, the show goes on because it is 11:35.
In most things, people say, can I do it again? You know, I'd like to try that one more time. I think I can do a better job.
Well, there's none of that with us. The moment you're doing it, the audience is seeing it. And it's real. And there's jeopardy. And that leads to people being better than we have any right to expect.
The show's Saturday night into Sunday morning. You recover. By Monday, you're writing to have things ready by Wednesday already and doing it 20 or 22 times a year. Lorn Michael still controls the show he invented. He is Still as involved as ever in the production and direction of the show, SNL's voice is Lauren's voice.
I've heard a lot of words associated with you. I'm going to throw a couple of them at you. Sure. Give me a yes or no on them, okay? Youthful.
Handsome. Youthful. Yeah. Controlling. Uh controlling, you know, sort of has a negative uh The context, I'd say in charge.
He is the one who chooses the hosts. He is the one who chooses which sketches make it on and which don't make it. He is the one who makes the last-second changes based on what works in dress rehearsal and what doesn't. He's kind of always just encouraged. whatever ideas I've had.
But he also kind of He keeps it a little bit of a distance too. which I think he wants. to maintain that a little bit, you know.
So he's not like your daddy. No, use it, please. It's kind of like the principal a little bit. Here, it's it It's a very clear thing of we have a job to do and we have to get it done. And I think structure is incredibly important to creative people.
I think boundaries and structure have to exist. You will hear many, many SNL alums with their own variation of the Lorne Michaels impression. Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies largely is based on a Lorne Michaels impression. All option.
They're gonna get away. I I'm just Which? Knock, knock. Who's that? Shh.
Let me tell you a little story about a man named Shh. It's very weird. The show is so hot. The show is loud, abrasive. And Lorne, he's Canadian.
I don't know how much that has to play into it. But Lorne is very. Detached and perhaps maybe aloof, but there's no doubt that what he's done has worked now for nearly 50 years. He is SNL. Its legacy is affecting American comedy.
Alright. a granular level. for the better part of fifty years. And its legacy is tied, I think, intricately with Lorne Michaels. Clearly, Lauren's been there for.
But by the time season 50 happens, 45 of the 50 seasons of the show. It's an incredible. amount of longevity with one show. Especially for a guy who is not the first person someone would think of when they think of S and L. There's nothing like it.
There hasn't been anything like it in its 50 years on the air. And look, you'll never see anything like it again. Think about all that has to go in to create a live show like this on a weekly basis. The chances NBC had to take to allow a live show like this on the air, the trust they have in Lorne Michaels to produce this show every week live on Saturday nights. And you will never see something like this again.
But I don't think it was ever that revolutionary. It just looked different. It was fashion. You know, we were a comedy show. You know, there were jokes that people remember, and there were thousands of jokes that they don't remember because they didn't work.
You know, there's. We had an impact because we were first. I think you can only be first once and you can only have that experience once. I think if we were still doing, if we were still revolutionary the way we were in the 70s, we'd be on some oldies tour. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Monte Montgomery.
And a special thanks to Scott Bertram and Christian Schneider. They're the hosts of the podcast. Wasn't that special? 50 years of SNL. The story of SNL.
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Mm-hmm.
