In 1974, NBC Tonight Show host Johnny Carson asked that the weekend broadcasts of "Best of Carson" come to an end, so he could take two weeknights off; NBC would thus air those repeats on those nights rather than feed them to affiliates for broadcast on either Saturdays or Sundays. Given Johnny Carson's undisputed status as the king 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. Dick Ebersol's first order of business was hiring a young Canadian producer named Lorne Michaels to be the show-runner. Television production in New York was already in decline in the mid-1970s, so NBC decided to base the show at their studios in Rockefeller Center to offset the overhead of maintaining those facilities. Lorne Michaels was given Studio 8H, a converted radio studio that prior to that point was most famous for having hosted Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra from 1937 to 1951, but was being used largely for network election coverage by the mid-1970s. When the first show aired on October 11, 1975 with George Carlin as its host, it was called NBC's Saturday Night because ABC featured a program at the same time titled Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. After ABC cancelled the Cosell program in 1976, the NBC program changed its name to Saturday Night Live on March 26, 1977. Every night, Don Pardo introduced the cast, a job he'd hold for 39 years until his death in 2014. The original concept was for a comedy-variety show featuring young comedians, live musical performances, short films by Albert Brooks and segments by Jim Henson featuring atypically adult and abstract characters from The Muppets world. Rather than have one permanent host, Lorne Michaels elected to have a different guest host each week. The first episode featured two musical guests, and the second episode, hosted by Paul Simon on October 18, was almost entirely a musical variety show with various acts. The Not Ready For Prime Time Players did not appear in this episode at all, other than as the bees with Paul Simon telling them they were cancelled, and Chevy Chase in the opening and in "Weekend Update". Over the course of Season 1, sketch comedy would begin to dominate the show and SNL would more closely resemble its current format. Andy Kaufman made several appearances that were popular with the audience over the season, while The Muppets' Land of Gorch bits were regarded as a poor fit with the rest of the show. The Land Of Gorch sketches were essentially cancelled after episode 10, although the associated Muppet characters still made sporadic appearances after that. After one final appearance at the start of season two, the Muppet characters were permanently dropped from SNL. During the season, Lorne Michaels appeared on-camera twice, on April 24 and May 22, to make an offer to The Beatles to reunite on the show. In the first appearance, he offered a certified check of $3,000. In the second appearance, he increased his offer to $3,200 and free hotel accommodations. John Lennon and Paul McCartney later both admitted they had been watching SNL from Lennon's apartment on May8 and briefly toyed with actually going down to the studio, but decided to stay in the apartment because they were too tired.
Cast
Changes and notes
The first cast member hired was Gilda Radner. The rest of the cast included fellow Second City alumni Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi, as well as National Lampoon "Lemmings" alumnus Chevy Chase who was chosen as anchor for Weekend Update, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, and Groundlings alumnus Laraine Newman. The original head writer was Michael O'Donoghue, a writer at National Lampoon who had worked alongside several cast members while directing The National Lampoon Radio Hour. The original theme music was written by future Academy Award–winning composer Howard Shore, who - along with his band - was the original band leader on the show. Paul Shaffer, who would go on to lead David Letterman's band on Late Night and then The Late Show, was also band leader in the early years. George Coe was hired because NBC wanted to have an older person in the cast. Much of the talent pool involved in the inaugural season was recruited from the National Lampoon Radio Hour, a nationally syndicated comedy series that often satirized current events. This would be the only season for George Coe and Michael O'Donoghue as official cast members. While George Coe was billed only in the premiere, he was seen in various small roles through the season before leaving the show altogether. Michael O'Donoghue was credited through the Candice Bergen episode and would continue to work for the show as a writer, as well as an occasionally featured performer, through season 5.
