SNL - Too many years later

Staying up all night was a favorite thing of mine in my youth and Saturday nights were no different. Back in those days, my parents owned a house at the beach and we would go every weekend.

I can remember watching a little known news show at 11:30 pm on Saturday nights called "NBC News Weekend" with even less know reporters Lloyd Dobbins and Linda Ellerbee. It was the first attempt at a hip late show on network TV. It lasted about 6 months but was a forerunner to the 1983-4 "NBC News Overnight" with the same Lloyd Dobbins (later Bill Schechner) and Linda Ellerbee. It too failed within a year or so but set the stage for all of the overnight news programs you see on network TV today. Somewhere I have on beta tape a couple of "NBC News Overnight's" with Schechner and Ellerbee. This is where Ellerbee got the "Lucky Duck" idea from. She received a little yellow duck (same one you see at the end of her production companies programs) from a viewer and she liked it so much she put it on the anchor desk and started calling it "Lucky Duck." After the show ended and she left NBC News, she started a production company called "Lucky Duck Productions." She also stole her trademark line, "And so it goes" from Lloyd Dobbins. Dobbins used it to close the show on "NBC News Weekend" and "Overnight." When he left "Overnight" Ellerbee started using it and has ever since. I met Dobbins in the early 90's at the NC state AP News Convention after he retired from NBC News and had moved to Raleigh. He jokingly said he was still mad at Ellerbee for stealing his line, but at least unlike him, it was still working.

After the "Weekend" experiment failed, Tom Snyder got a shot at late night Saturday with a version of "The Tomorrow Show." It failed also but "The Tomorrow Show" moved to five nights a week after "The Tonight Show" and later went to CBS as the "The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder" after "The Late Show with David Letterman" and still continues after moving from a news/feature show to a purely comedy show with Craig Kilborn and now with Craig Ferguson.

On that last "The Tomorrow Show" on Saturday nights, Tom Snyder introduced a group of people that would become show biz icons. On that August night the world was introduced to the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players" better known as Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Garrett Morris. I do think Belushi was stoned out of his mind that night. He did some things that got Snyder hot under the collar, but it was a forebearer of what was to come. The next Saturday night at 11:30 pm we saw the first prat fall of Chevy Chase and an institution was born.

I watched that show every Saturday night for the next 5 years. In the 1980 season when Lorne Michaels left, most people, including me, left also. It was a few years later I came back during the later Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo years and then last watched regularly in the 1985-6 "superstar" season of Jim Belushi, Mary Gross, Gary Kroeger, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the well known Billy Crystal; Martin Short, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer and Rich Hall. After that season, when the cast was purged, I bailed for good.

I would catch an occasional show if there was a guest host I liked but would only watch those parts they were in. In recent times I watched the first post 9/11 opening with NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani and NY Governor George Pataki. After the monologue I bailed again and had not watched SNL since. Until this past Saturday night. It was a repeat of the Christmas show with Jack Black as the guest host.

With the new TV season about to start, there was nothing on and for the first time in a long time, I wasn't fast asleep at 11:30 on a Saturday night. So the wife and I watched SNL. Either I have gotten too old to get modern comedy or this show stunk. None of the skits were funny. Weekend Update with Tina Fey was so lame, I have seen amateur parodies funnier. Even the wife commented how unfunny it was.

With NBC producing two shows this season about a fictitious late night comedy/sketch show ("30 Rock" created and produced by SNL alum Tina Fey) and "Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip" by "West Wing" creator Aaron Sorkin) either one or both could be funnier than the show they are based on.

Sometimes it isn't such a good idea to keep reinventing yourself. After 30 years it might just be time to retire SNL. One could say it had a good run.